Word: biafra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...tightening: in the midst of the renewed fighting it received an unexpected boost from President Charles de Gaulle. In a communiqué, the French government declared that the conflict should be settled "on the basis of the right of peoples to govern themselves"-the first such commitment favoring Biafra by a European nation. "This strengthens our hand at Addis," exclaimed Biafran Information Minister Ifegwu Eke. "And if the talks break down, our African friends will be prepared to take the issue to the United Nations." Only four African nations-Zambia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Gabon-have so far recognized Biafra...
...peace talks scheduled for Addis Ababa this week, Nigerian federal forces launched a fresh drive against secessionist Biafra. From north and south, the federals were last week pushing toward the center of the breakaway state, determined either to finish off Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu's regime or at least improve their bargaining position for the talks...
Thousands of refugees from the war zone have filled Biafra's towns to overflowing; other thousands are packed into refugee camps that have neither enough food nor enough medicine. At Umuaka Camp near Port Harcourt, where 100 refugees have to share a 15-by-15-foot room, the daily ration consists of two cups of cassava, a starchy, sawdust-like root. When Wilde visited there, a child had just died-it was a year and a half old and weighed no more than eight pounds. Its mother was too weak to brush the flies off the body. "This...
Prices in Biafra have skyrocketed. A chicken that cost 70? before the war now brings $5.50. The government and the missionaries are advising the people to eat rats, dogs, lizards, even white ants to get some protein into their systems. Gasoline is rationed and electricity is in short supply...
Kerosene-Lit Airstrip. Relief officials estimate that Biafra needs daily food imports of at least 200 tons, a target that a fly-by-night air lift of chartered old Constellations has not been able to meet. A bare trickle of supplies has been flown in, some by the Vatican. The flight into Biafra is a dangerous trip through radar-guided Nigerian antiaircraft fire to a secret, kerosene-lit airstrip that one pilot describes as "little wider than a bicycle path." A medicine-laden aircraft crashed last month, killing its American pilot and two other Americans...