Troops fight off attack on Luanda

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34000, 14 November 1975, Page 13

Troops fight off attack on Luanda

(New Zealand Press Association —Copyright?

LUANDA, November 13.

The two-day-old Government in Luanda fought off an attack to the capital today by opposition forces, but rival troops attacking from the north and south threatened to choke off the city.

Military sources in Luanda said that troops of the Soviet-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola beat back a mortar supported assault across the Bongo River on Quifangondo, 12 miles north of the capital.

The attack was repulsed, M.P.L.A. military sources said, and life within the capital began returning to normal after yesterday’s wild independence celebra-

tions, marked by revelry and shooting in the air. Diplomatic sources in Luanda said that an opposition armoured column led by 1500 white mercenaries and former Portuguese officers was advancing from Porto Amboim, 150 miles south of Luanda. The sources said that the column was headed for Dondo, a control point for Luanda’s hydro-electric power supply about 100 miles south-east of the capital. The fall of Dondo would choke off Launda’s vital services, leaving its Govern-

ment at the mercy of its enemies, because opposition troops attacking from the north were already within mortar range of the capital’s water supplies, the sources said.

Agence France-Presse reported that 18 countries had by today announced recognition of the Angolan Government in Luanda. The first of these were the former Portuguese African colonies of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe Islands, themselves independent only this year. They were followed by Congo, Mali, Guinea, Mongolia and Ethiopia. Six eastern European countries also recognised the Government set up under the M.P.L.A. president, Dr Agostinho Neto: Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Two Latin American countries, Brazil and Cuba, and North Vietnam have all announced their readiness to open diplomatic missions in Luanda. The M.P.L.A. attached great importance to the Brazilian recognition, sources said. , The former colonial power, Portugal, however, intends to abide by the terms of the Alvor agreement which it signed with the three movements in January and recognise only a Government of national unity, reliable sources said in Lisbon. The Organisation of African Unity secretariat in Addis Ababa called for international aid to the newlyindependent State, but condemned all foreign, political and military involvement in the situation there.

The O.A.U. secretary-gen-eral, Mr William Eteki Mboumoua, sent a diplomat-ically-worded and identical message, however, to each of the three Angolan movements urging the Angolan people to work for reconstruction and unity.