Black S.A. battalion hits guerrilla base

Press, 18 March 1982, Page 8

Black S.A. battalion hits guerrilla base

NZPA-ReuterOshakati, Namibia (South-West Africa) South African troops held an area of south-western Angola yesterday, ferrying out captured supplies of arms and food after a cross-border raid in which they said 201 guerrillas were killed. The raid, launched with an airborne assault on a SouthWest Africa People's Organisation forward supply base on Saturday was the first incursion into Angola announced by the South African authorities since November.

A small group of journalists and officers flown to -the base by helicopter were told the raid was carried out by only 45 men of the oncesecret 32 Battalion, a mainly black counter-insurgency commando which S.W.A.P.O. has accused in the past of committing atrocities. Helicopters also joined in the attack in which the South

African forces lost three dead, two white and one black. The officer commanding military forces in Namibia, Major-General Charles Lloyd, said food caches near the camp—which included tinned meat packed in Bu-lawayo-showed Zimbabwean support for S.W.A.P.O. The general said it was the first time Zimba bwean tinned meat had been found at a S.W.A.P.O. base. S.W.A.P.O. has been fighting a guerrilla war against South African rule of this disputed territory for 16 years. But officers at the northern headquarters at Oshakati said the camp in the Cambeno Valley 22km north of the border and 70km inland, was the furthest west S.W.A.P.O. had operated. They added that there had been only one previous raid

in 1980 on a base in Mocamedes province, north of the remote north-west Kaokoland area of Namibia. General Lloyd, briefing reporters after accompanying them on the visit to ‘ the camp, said S.W.A.P.O. had apparently decided to move back into that area to stretch South African forces as thinly as possible. He' added that this could be because of heavy guerrilla losses suffered in two major South African raids into the more central Huila and Cuando Cubango provinces late last year. The South African troops who carried out Saturday's attack said they expected to hold the inhospitable mountain valley until the end of the week while about 16 tonnes of captured supplies—including missile launchers, rockets, automatic rifles and mines—were taken across the border by helicopter.