Word: airlifters
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...week's end, that prospect seemed increasingly dim as M.P.L.A. forces, equipped by a massive Soviet airlift of arms and equipment and aided by some 7,500 Cuban soldiers, routed the F.N.L.A. in one battle after another on the northern front. The most important town to fall into M.P.L.A. hands was the provincial capital of Uige (formerly Carmona). Once considered impregnable, the F.N.L.A. stronghold was abandoned without a fight after an M.P.L.A. rocket assault. After the fall of Uige, the M.P.L.A. captured the nearby airfield of Ngage, which had been the F.N.L.A.'s major supply point for arms...
...trying to "colonize" Africa, it is an open secret that the U.S. has been funneling aid to the F.N.L.A.-UNITA forces through Zaïre. In Luanda, the M.P.L.A. showed off a huge cache of captured weapons and ammunition, the latter mostly American-made. Some crates were marked MILITARY AIRLIFT COMMAND, CHARLESTON, S.C. and consigned to Ndjili Airport, Kinshasa. Others bore the legend FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR MUTUAL DEFENSE...
...threat of all-out civil war has prompted a wholesale flight of whites. About 250,000 have left in the past two months, most via a massive airlift to Lisbon. There the disgruntled emigres are adding to conservative pressures on the government (see box page 44). Only about 10% of the 500,000 whites who lived in Angola when independence was first promised 18 months ago now remain in the territory...
Some of the bloodiest fighting took place in and around Malange, the central coffee-growing area 250 miles east of Luanda. Rotting corpses contaminated the city's water supply, and authorities called for an emergency airlift of quicklime. Frightened whites formed a massive car and truck convoy, but their road route was deemed so dangerous that Portuguese troops refused to provide an armed escort. Despite the perils, most of the convoy arrived safely in Nova Lisboa, Angola's second biggest city, where 20,000 white refugees were already waiting for evacuation...
...cope with the crisis, Portugal increased its emergency airlift to six jets a day. That is expected to increase this week when France, at Lisbon's request, joins in the evacuation effort. Even so, it is doubtful whether the airlift will be able to accommodate everybody. Virtually all of the 400,000 remaining whites want out, and nobody is sure how many of Angola's estimated 5.4 million blacks will try to leave...