Troops killed 1000: claim

Press, 18 March 1983, Page 8

Troops killed 1000: claim

NZPA London Soldiers of the Zimbabwean North Koreantrained sth Brigade are estimated to have killed more than 1000 people in southern Zimbabwe, the 8.8. C. reports.

The television item showed bodies lying in the bush, bodies being buried by villagers, and damage to homes and property that villagers said had been done by the sth Brigade. Robert Mugabe’s Government has denied newspaper reports of massacres in Matabeleland, home of the minority Ndebele tribe from whom the Opposition leader, Joshua Nkomo, draws his support. The sth Brigade was sent into the area a month ago with orders to hunt out armed dissidents.

The reporter, Philip Hay-

ton, said that his estimated death toll of more than 1000 had been calculated by adding villagers’ reports of killings to bodies his team had counted along their 800 km trek through the bush. Hayton said that in two hours his team had found eight bodies. In another area, he filmed the bodies of six young men. Villagers said that soldiers had ordered the six off a bus, marched them into the bush and shot them.

Hayton said that homes, particularly those of people associated with Mr Nkomo, had been razed in several villages and that soldiers had closed all Zimbabwe African People’s Union offices and shot many of Mr Nkomo’s deputies. He said that there was no evidence that the white population had been harassed.