Big holiday toll in Rhodesia

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 6

Big holiday toll in Rhodesia

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury Rhodesia’s guerrilla war claimed 51 more lives on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, the military authorities have reported in Salisbury. A communique also said that on Christmas Eve a Rhodesian military post on the north-west border with Zambia had been hit with small arms, machine-gun, and mortar fire from Zambia. The bulletin said there were no casualties, and the Rhodesians had not returned the fire.

In Lusaka, the Zambian capital, a spokesman for Mr Joshua Nkomo’s Zambiabased guerrilla organisation said the black nationalists had ferried large consignments of weapons into Rhodesia for a new intensification of the war.

Mr Willie Musarurwa, publicity secretary for the Zimbabwe Africa People’s Union, said the war would spread to Rhodesia’s main cities and towns in an effort “to control some of these areas.

"We have built up a strong force of urban guerrillas, and our military presence in Salisbury, Bulawayo, Gwelo, Umtali, and other cities and towns is now starting to be felt by the enemy,” he said. The Rhodesian military communique said the dead included 26 guerrillas, five guerrilla collaborators, and one recruit, as well as two black Government soldiers. Fourteen civilians had been killed by guerrillas over the Christmas holiday, and two had died in crossfire, the bulletin said.