Rebels 'inside vital port’

Press, 14 December 1977, Page 8

Rebels 'inside vital port’

NZPA Rome | The Eritrean People’s Lib-; eration Front has captured half the strategic Red Sea port of Massawa in Eritrea. and isolated the provincial capital of Asmara, a rebel spokesman has claimed in Rome. Eritrean insurgents claim, to have captured 90 per cent of the northern province. The rebels want to separate the former Italian colony from Ethiopia, which annexed it in 1962. Ethiopia's military Government is also battling Somali-backed secessionists in its south-eastern Ogaden region. The rebels, ethnic Somalis trying to annex the region to neighbouring Somalia, have seized more than a third of the region since last July. “The liberation of Massawa will herald the complete independence of Eritrea,” said Made Michael Khasai, a spokesman for the E.P.L.F. In Rome. The E.P.L.F. is one of two rebel groups that has

been fighting for Eritrean I independence for the last 151 years. He said that E.P.L.F- fight-1 ers had nearly completed the! conquest of Massawa after a fierce battle that began four days ago. He also said that Adi Kaieh, 110 km south of Asmara, capital of the Akele Guzai region and the nearest supply post for the Asmara, lis also on the verge of falling to E.P.L.F. forces. Mr Khasai said that an all-out attack on Asmara would begin after completion of the battles in Massawa and Adi Kaieh. He claimed that Asmara, defended by 22,000 to 24,000 Ethiopians, was already without factories, electricity, or water supplies.

He said that there were about 15,000 Ethiopian soldiers defending the area around Massawa and claimed E.P.L.F. guerrillas had killed or wounded 5000 Ethiopian troups since the assault on Massawa began in mid-October. He said that in the four days of fighting for Mass-

awa itself, the E.P.L.F- had captured or destroyed 35 Soviet T 54 tanks, an estimated 90 per cent of the mechanised units in Massawa. Two of the four quarters of Massawa, including the airport and the vital Agip fuel depot, were in the hands of the E.P.L.F. by late Monday, and the fall of Eritrea’s main Red Sea port was expected within a matter of hours, he added. Adi Kaieh, on the main highway toward the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, was the last outpost of supplies and reinforcements for Asmara since the fall of Decamere and other cities in the area in July. The defeat of the estimated 7000

[defenders there would further isolate the capital. [ Mr Khasai claimed that I many prisoners had been I taken during the fighting for Massawa and Adi Kaieh, inieluding an Ethiopian colonel. The E.P.L.F. and another rebel group, the Eritrean Liberation Front, have scored dramatic battlefield successes this year, despite the fact that the Soviet Union has been supplying Ethiopia with arms. The two rebel groups fought a civil war between themselves several years ago and are still suspicious of each other, but they recently signed the basis for a political and military agreement to put aside their differences.