Angolan guerrillas say their bomb killed over 200 people

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 6

Angolan guerrillas say their bomb killed over 200 people

NZPA-AP Paris The Angolan rebel group, U.N.1.T.A., claimed responsibility yesterday for the bombing of a barracks in central Angola, and said that the blast had killed more than 200 people. U.N.I.T.A. said that two Soviet Army lieutenantcolonels and 37 Cuban officers were among those killed. The rebel group’s estimate of deaths from the bombing on Thursday in the provincial capital of Huambo was higher than numbers reported in

Yugoslav and Soviet news accounts published earlier.

The official Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug, reported from the Angolan capital, Luanda, that about 30 people had been killed and more than 70 injured when a jeep loaded with dynamite exploded in the town. The Soviet news agency, Tass, said from Luanda that 100 people had died in the attack, which it called a monstrous crime. U.N.I.T.A. — the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola — a guerrilla faction opposed to

Angola’s Marxist-Leninist Government, said in a statement issued in Paris that the bombing was the beginning of a new campaign of urban terror.

The official Angolan news agency, Angop, has not confirmed the bombing. . A huge charge of TNT had destroyed a building housing Soviet and Cuban officers, U.N.I.T.A. said. Tanjug reported that the building had collapsed when the dynamite exploded in front of it, killing people inside and passers-by. Tanjug said that doctors in Huambo and Luanda

were fighting for the lives of many of the injured, and that many of the victims could not yet be identified. Tass said that women and children had been among those killed.

Several Angolan Army officers, unhappy with the Cuban “occupation” of Angola, had collaborated in the attack, U.N.I.T.A. asserted. An estimated 20,000 Cuban troops are based in Angola to hejp the Marxist Government fight the anti-Marxist rebels.

The Angolan authorities blamed rebel guerrillas for the blast, Tanjug said.