Santo rebels Captured

Press, 1 September 1980, Page 1

Santo rebels Captured

NZPA Lugauville Seventy-one secessionist rebels last evening packed into the jail in Luganville, capital of the Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo, after a successful Papua New Guinea troop, raid against rebel headquarters in the Santo town of Vanafo early yesterday morning.

The commander of the Papua New Guinea troops on' Santo, Colonel Tony Huai, said in a telephone interview last evening that the 71 includled the rebel leader, Mr Jimmy Stevens.

Colonel Huai said a company of 110 combat infantrymen had moved into Vanafo .at 2 a.m. (local time) and had taken the town with no opposition from rebel forces. “We were shot at by one bloke who was out of range,” Colonel Huai said. The Papua New Guinea troops had moved towards

the rebel marksman and answered his fire with tear gas.

The infantrymen had then rounded up up the rebels, including “most of the ringleaders,” and had also taken care of a group who had capitulated. “We also pulled down the rebel flag and put up a Vanuato one,” Colonel Huai said.

He said, however, that more rebel opposition was expected in two other areas of Santo, but these rebel groups were only in “small numbers.”

All Papua New Guinea troops were withdrawn from Vanafo in the after-

noon, he said, but patrols j would continue in the township and its surrounding areas. News of the fall of the rebel headquarters on, the island of Espiritu Santo was received in a military communique received by the Papua New Guinea Defence Minister, Mr Gerega Pepena, early yesterday afternoon. Mr Pepena said in a statement issued in Port Moresby that there had been no opposition- when the troops had entered the township of Vanafo at dawn, and that “the rebel headquarters had been captured by 7 a.m.”

Mr Pepena also revealed that at mid-morning a landing party of Papua New Guinea troops and Vanuatu police mobile unit members had “come under rebel fire” as they were being dropped at Wide Bay, hear Vanafo, from the Papua New Guinea patrolboat. Two members of the party were wounded. One member of the boat crew was shot in the leg above the knee and one Vanuatu police unit member was wounded in the calf. Both men were later taken to hospital in Luganville, and were later

reported to be in a satisfactory condition. ; The military assault on the rebel stronghold was delayed after Mr Stevens’s son. Eddie, was killed at an army roadblock. The ?- Vanuatu Government spokesman, Mr John Beasant, said Eddie Stevens, aged 24, was killed on Friday when a truck tried to crash through a roadblock close to the rebel position. The Papua New Guinea soldiers, called in by the Vanuatu Prime Minister, the Rev. Walter Lini, to help crush the secessionist rebellion, first fired into the air. When the truck

did not stop, one of them lobbed a grenade at the vehicle,, Mr Beasant said, and Mr Stevens was killed instantly.

His death was the first reported since Papua New Guinea soldiers landed on Espiritu Santo two weeks ago, although several people had been wounded and more than 130 rebels had been arrested. Mr Beasant said three other men on the truck were wounded in a short gun battle. Father Linl, who passed through Brisbane yesterday morning on his way to Sydney, said Mr Stevens would be put on trial like anyone else and negotiations were being held with neighbouring countries to see if any were prepared to take him. Father Lini is travelling to New Delhi for a Commonwealth heads of government conference.