First raid on ‘white’ Salisbury

Press, 14 November 1978, Page 1

First raid on ‘white’ Salisbury

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury Rhodesia Radio last night broadcast a police message to the residents of Salisbury, warning all motorists not to travel to and from outlying areas of the town at night. Yesterday black nationalist guerrillas raided a white suburban home in the Rhodesian capital for the first time in the six-year-old war. An elderly white woman was reported to have been seriously wounded. Reporters who tried to reach the scene were turned back at police road-blocks. A police spokesman said the warning applied to virtually all of the boundaries of Salisbury which, with its spacious white homes and large gardens, extends over a wide area It was the first time a guerrilla raiding party armed with rockets and machine-guns had penetrated a white residential area of the sprawling city The guerrillas attacked a home in the wealthy eastern suburbs of Um-

winsidale. with mcket< and machine-gun fire head-quarters said. Ihi house was badly damaged. The military communique said that shortly before the attack, guerrilla." ambushed a car on a mair road nearby, wounding « passenger, and tried to se a petrol station on fire. Residents reported tha the firing on the house 12km from the city centre lasted at least two minutes They said the guerrilla; set fire to diesel fuel a the service station, but th< flames were quickly ex tinguished. In January, guerrilla; killed 10 white civilians it scattered attacks arounc Salisbury, but never brok< into the white suburbs. Guerrillas have infiltrated Salisbury’s blacl townships and on thre« occasions planted bomb* in the white city centre Eleven people were killed in a department store blast in August last year (White farmers angered by attacks in Zambia, page 8.)