Word: bakwanga
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Bodies in Bakwanga. Whether Lumumba has the military capability to conquer Katanga is becoming increasingly uncertain. At week's end the Lumumba forces assigned to spearhead the Katanga invasion were bogged down in the neighboring province of Kasai in what seemed to be building into a civil war of serious proportions...
Fortnight ago Lumumba's troops had captured without a shot the town of Bakwanga, capital of a would-be autonomous republic called "Mining State." But when they sought to move out of Ba kwanga and "pacify" the rest of Mining State, hundreds of fierce Lumumba-hating Baluba tribesmen attacked through the forest, driving the central-government troops back into town. From sources unknown, the anti-Lumumba forces have acquired automatic weapons and mortars. Reports from Bakwanga at week's end told of streets littered with almost 300 bodies. The few remaining whites were said to have taken refuge...
...deep in Kasai province. "National emergency," explained Army Chief of Staff Colonel Joseph Mobutu, suggesting that it was only an expedition to quell new fighting between Baluba and Lulua tribesmen. But the moment they landed, the troops struck out by rail and truck along the 166-mile road to Bakwanga, stronghold of onetime Lumumba pal, Albert Kalonji, who had declared the diamond-rich region an independent nation called Mining State. Swearing that his tribesmen, mainly armed with bows and arrows, could resist the "invaders," Kalonji hastily flew off to Elisabethville to beg aid from his fellow secessionist, President Moise Tshombe...