Rhodesia ‘killed 675 in refugee camp’

Press, 23 August 1976, Page 6

Rhodesia ‘killed 675 in refugee camp’

NZPA Geneva A United Nations official has said in a report received in Geneva that 675 people were found dead after a Rhodesian attack earlier this month on a refugee camp in Mozambique, but the final death toll is likely to be The' Rhodesian Government has repeated its contention that the camp had been occupied by Rhodesian nationalist guerrillas and not by refugees. More than 675 people were wounded in the attack, the United Nations official said in a message to the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The official (Mr Hugo I doyaga), said he . visited the camp on Wednesday and found a “desolating” scene of death and destruction there. He said more deaths were expected among the wounded, and other people were thought to have died in the bush surrounding the camp at Nyazonia, near thej Rhodesian border.

Mr Idoyaga, a Uruguayan, is the United Nations refugee commissioner’s representative in Mozambique. He wired his report to Geneva on Saturday. "Dried-up bloodstains on the ground, the stench from the graves, and thousands of bulletshells testified to what must have been a horrifying scene,” Mr Idoyaga’s report said. He said he had obtained his information from Mozambican officials, hospital staff, surviving refugees, and personal observation. Mr Idoyaga quoted witnesses as telling him that Rhodesian troops, wearing Mozambican uniforms, fired indiscriminately, using antiaircraft guns as well as light weapons. They had first assembled part of the camp population, which totalled about 8000, the report said.

Mr Idoyaga said there was “absolutely no doubt" that the camp was one of three accommodating Rhodesian refugees near the borderland supported by the U.N.H.C.R. He had visited them last May.

A Roman Catholic Bishop, Donald Lamont, in Salisbury said on Saturday that security police had questioned him and warned him that charges might be brought against him. He said officers of the police special branch called on him last Wednesday, “but I have not been charged. We will have to wait and see,” the Bishop, an outspoken critic of the Rhodesian Government, told reporters. A police spokesman confirmed that Bishop Lamont, who is Bishop of Umtali in eastern Rhodesia, was questioned by the special branch “in the course of routine enquiries.” A spokesman for the Ministry of Law and Order said he knew of no charges pending against Bishop Lamont The Bishop recently wrote an open letter to the Rhodesian Prime Minister (Mr lan Smith) saying the policies of his white-minority Government mocked the law of Christ and made communism attractive to the African people. He added that he deplored all acts of violence.;