Smith troops hunt killers after mission massacre

Press, 26 June 1978, Page 1

Smith troops hunt killers after mission massacre

NZPA-Reuter

Salisbury

Rhodesian troops with tracker dogs are hunting the killers of 12 British missionaries. Three families and two single women were massacred in the bloodiest incident so far against white civilians in the guerrilla war which has been waged for five years.

The 12 — one of whom was a baby, aged 3 weeks — were axed, bayoneted, and bludgeoned to death on Friday night, at the Elim Pentecostal Mission near Umtali, on Rhodesia’s eastern border with Mozambique.

Two of the ten white mission teachers survived the attack. One, a woman, aged 28, suffered critical wounds after being beaten to the ground. The other escaped unscathed. Military headquarters, and black teachers and schoolchildren at the scene, said that the killers had identified themselves as members of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Z.A.N.L.A.) of the Patriotic Front co-leader, Robert Mugabe.

Three men. five women, and four children were killed. Meanwhile, Rhodesian military authorities have denied reports from Mozambique that helicopterborne Rhodesian forces attacked guerrillas in Mozambique and killed 17 refugees and two Belgian United Nations employees. A spokesman for the Rhodesian Military Command said that the allegation by the Mozambican Army’s general staff was “completely without foundation.”

The Mozambican statement said on Friday, that a Rhodesian attack on Manica province in central Mozambique began on Thursday night with a Rhodesian raid at Sussin-

benga, 32 kilometres inside Mozambique. Rhodesian leaders have expressed horror at the missionaries’ murder. Chief Jeremiah Chirau, one of three moderate nationalist leaders in the transitional Government, which the Patriotic Front is fighting for control of the Rhodesian countryside, called it a “tragic activity of cowards and criminals.” He called it a barbaric attempt to undermine the Salisbury majority-rule agreement reached by the white Prime Minister (Mr lan Smith) and internally based nationalists.

The vice-president of the liberal white National Unifying Force (Mr Mick McNally) said: “It is wicked that this sort of thing should be indulged in for political purposes.” The chairman of the human rights Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Rhodesia (C.C.J.P.R.) (Mr John Deary) said: “Such acts of brutality are themselves horrifying. When perpetrated on those whose lives are dedicated to the service of others and the love of Christ, they are indeed past explanation and understanding.” The guerrillas raided the mission, which is about 10 kilometres from the border with Mozambique, at 8 p.m. on Friday,

The British staff were killed in a quiet glade. The women, who had been partially undressed, looked as though they had been

sexually assaulted, the police said. The killing was done silently. The 250 African high school pupils, ordered to stay in their dormitories, said they had heard nothing and only discovered the killings when they emerged from their beds on Saturday morning. Parents and children were lying in three separate heaps when the police arrived on the scene. Bloodstained stick' and logs, which had evidently helped kill the victims, were strewn nearby. An axe was embedded in the spine of one woman. Other victims had been bayoneted several times.

European missionaries have increasingly become victims of Rhodesia’s war. A total of 29 have been killed since the fighting began in earnest in 1972. This was the first time that missionaries families had been killed. The dead were: Phillip Evans, aged 29, his wife, Susan, aged 33, and their daughter, Rebecca, aged four; Peter McCann, aged 30, his wife Sandra, aged 30, their son, Phillip, aged six, and their daughter, Joy, aged five, Robert Lynn, aged 37, his wife, Joyce, aged 36, and their daughter, Pamela Grace, aged three weeks; Miss Catherine Picken, aged 50, and Miss Elizabeth Ham-iTon-White, aged 37. Miss Mary Fisher was reported in a critical condition in a Salisbury hospital.