Angola accuses Zaire of bombing towns

Press, 24 March 1977, Page 6

Angola accuses Zaire of bombing towns

NZPA-Reuter Luanda Angola has accused Zaire of bombing three of its towns, and has added that it will not tolerate such attacks for very long. A Defence Ministry communique reiterated that Angola did not want to be involved in the fighting in the Zaire border province of Shaba.

Zaire says Cuban troops based in Angola trained the former Katangese gendarmes who invaded Shaba 11 days ago.

Angola’s communique called it “an internal conflict which only concerns the Zaire people.” But on March 15, it said, “two Zaire aircraft violated Angolan air space and bombed the town of Shilungo. On March 16 another Zaire plane bombed the towns of Shilumbo and Camafuafa.”

Angola “would not tolerate for very long attacks on its populations,” the communique said. The communique said Zaire wanted;- to J internationalise the Shaba conflict.

“With these provocations they are trying to pull the Popular Republic of Angola into the conflict with the aim of finding the pretext for new aggressions against Angola and so that Ziare

could be helped militarily to repress populations risen against the decrepit regime.” In Kinshasa, capital of Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko has dismissed de-1 nials by Dr Fidel Castro of I Cuban military involvement 1 in Zaire and charged anew that the 10-day-old invasion of the south is led by Cuban and Angolan soldiers with arms and “ideological” backing from Moscow. The national news agency reported that Zaire planes had been “massively bombing” positions held by the invaders of the copper-rich Shaba province. A second shipment of emergency United States aid was on its way to the former Belgian Congo to help Government troops fight the attackers. In an interview with the Government news agency, Azap, General Mobutu said the former Katangan' militiamen who invaded the south . . . “were in fact led by Cubans, from whom they received military and ideological instruction beforehand, in spite of I the stormy denials by Fidel ’Castro.”

Dr Castro told reporters on Monday “not a single Cuban” was involved with the invasion force.

The province supplies 7 per cent of the world’s copper and well over half Zaire’s exports.