December 20, 1999
Namibia -- Angolan government troops who swept through a rural area along the Namibia border last week left in their wake burned huts and the bodies of men who apparently had been executed, witnesses said today. Ten days after the Angolan troops crossed the Kavango River and entered Namibia to pursue Unita rebels, the toll on civilians in the region became apparent. Witnesses said that Angolan government forces rounded up men, women and children on Tuesday across the river from Namibia, 12 miles east of Rundu, and marched them further into Angolan territory. Gunshots were heard later in the day.
An Associated Press reporter who went to the site afterwards found the bodies of nine men, all with gunshot wounds to the forehead. The bodies had been doused with fuel and set on fire, but rains had doused the flames. All the men wore civilian clothes. One body had been scalped, and a hand was chopped off. It was unclear what happened to the other people who were marched away at gunpoint.
The attacks occurred after Namibia gave the Angolan army permission to launch attacks on rebel strongholds from Namibian soil. The Angolan government, locked in a 25-year civil war with the rebels, has reportedly scored major gains in recent months. In a half-mile area of Angola near the border, every home and straw hut had been set on fire. Toys and other possessions were scattered among the ashes. Angolan government soldiers took cattle, beds and other looted items across the river into Namibia and sold them, witnesses said. Angolan government soldiers, in uniform and armed, were seen drinking in Namibian bars. Foreign tourists have been evacuated from the area 370 miles northeast of the Namibian capital, Windhoek.
"There is no law over there anymore," said Schalk Visser, who owns the Manyana Lodge on the Namibian side of the river. "Now it's just the law of the AK-47." An Angolan policeman, Mano Branco, drinking from a bottle of liquor, predicted that the days of the rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi, are numbered. "One more week, he is finished," he declared.
But the whereabouts of the leader of Unita, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, are unknown. Analysts say that although the rebels have suffered recent battlefield defeats, Mr. Savimbi could keep fighting a low-level bush war as he has for years.
The war, meanwhile, is starting to spill over into Namibia. The Namibian Press Association reported that a rocket allegedly fired by Angolan government troops destroyed the house of a Namibian man 120 miles east of Rundu. No one was in the house when it was hit, the report said.
