Word: biafra
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With the federal capture of Owerri two weeks ago, Nigeria's civil war entered a new and perhaps final phase. Secessionist Biafra, now less than one-tenth its original size, holds but one important town: Umuahia. Should it fall, Lieut. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu would lose his last physical claim on breakaway statehood and be forced, if he is still able, to carry on his fight for Biafra's Ibo people from the jungle. As it advanced slowly but steadily on Umuahia last week, TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes joined Nigeria's 3rd Marine Commando division. His report...
...Ibos among them. Fearing death at the hands of the federals, they had chosen to flee north in the path of the advance and now were gathering, some 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 strong, in the roughly 60-mi. by 40-mi. oblong noose into which Biafra has shrunk. The roads are heavily mined, often forcing federal soldiers to take to the thick roadside bush. There they use their submachine guns as deadly scythes, pouring thousands of rounds into the thickets and the few roadside huts they come upon. As in any war, some civilians...
...even powerless to intervene in Biafra, since the Organization of African Unity has declared Nigeria's war to be a regional preserve. That leaves only one trouble spot-the Middle East-where U.N. intervention is possible, if unpromising. After ten months of mediation by Special Representative Gunnar Jarring, another arms buildup threatens the area. In fact, the Russians have signed an agreement with Cairo providing for massive new military aid beyond replacement of Arab losses during last year's Six-Day War. Shipments are now leaving Russia carrying the first installments of a promised 500 tanks...
...Biafra's other war-on hunger-the Red Cross resumed night relief flights that had been interrupted two weeks ago when federal troops started to fire on its planes. Together with flights chartered by Caritas, the international Catholic relief organization, the Biafran airlift brought to starving Biafrans some 30 tons of food and med icine per night-still only a fraction of the 1,000 tons a day that are needed. At week's end negotiators who have been meeting for four weeks in Addis Ababa made marked progress in clearing the logjam holding up large-scale relief...
...news from Biafra daily il lustrates, hunger is more than a growl from the stomach; it is a shriek from the soul. Robbed of nourishment, the body consumes its own flesh until the victim is literally no longer himself...