Angolan Rebels Bombard Big City
By Casimiro Siona
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 30, 1998; 11:30 a.m. EST
LUANDA, Angola (AP) -- Angolan rebels shelled the country's
second-largest city today, an attack that came hours after the president
described their leader as a liar.
State radio said shells landed in downtown Huambo, the central highland
city serving as a base for the Angolan army as well as U.N. observers and
aid workers. Huambo is 300 miles southeast of Luanda, the capital.
Artillery shells were also landing about every 15 minutes in Kuito, a city 80
miles east of Huambo that has been under a rebel siege for more than two
weeks, according to radio RNA. The rebels apparently were targeting the
airport, RNA said.
The explosions in Huambo caused panic in the city, whose population has
swelled since the country's civil war resumed Dec. 4. Tens of thousands of
refugees fleeing fighting in the countryside have converged on the city of
300,000.
The rebel attacks today came hours after President Jose Eduardo dos
Santos ruled out peace talks with the rebel group.
In a speech broadcast on state radio RNA late Tuesday, Dos Santos also
described rebel leader Jonas Savimbi as a liar for pretending to be
committed to a 1994 peace pact.
The government ''will never again accept the demands from outside the
country to give ... one more chance to the liars who have demonstrated that
they are unable to accept differences of opinion within the framework of
peace and democracy,'' he said.
Angola has been ravaged by conflict since gaining independence from
Portugal in 1975.
The United Nations is monitoring a 1994 peace accord that until recently
appeared to have ended the two-decade civil war between UNITA rebels
and the government.
A cargo plane chartered by the United Nations crashed near Huambo on
Saturday with 14 people on board. The cause of the crash, as the plane
passed over the war zone, was not known.
The U.N. Security Council has asked Angola's government and the UNITA
rebels for access to the crash site but has not received a response from
either, U.N. officials said.
The Security Council has blamed UNITA, a Portuguese acronym for the
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, for the return to war.
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