Word: biafra
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...second time in 14 months of cruel civil war, Nigeria's federal government and Biafra's secessionist regime were edging toward peace talks last week. Meeting in Niamey, capital of Niger, under the aegis of the Organization for African Unity, the warring parties promised to undertake a second try at a full-scale peace conference in Addis Ababa on Aug. 5. At the very least the Biafran leader, Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, hopes to achieve a temporary ceasefire. For Biafra desperately needs a respite in the bitter...
Children's War. The real enemy, however, is the protein shortage that afflicts blockaded Biafra, and grows worse with each day. Attempts to alleviate it through large-scale relief measures have so far foundered on either Nigerian or Biafran intransigence. Kwashiorkor, a deadly protein deficiency, is killing scores of Ojukwu's people daily. Estimates of the extent of the suffering are at best approximate, but from 1,500 to 40,000 Biafrans are dying of starvation each week. The grisly figures are expected to mount dramatically if the war does not end soon. "There is so little food...
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...
Although delegations from Biafra and Nigeria met Saturday, there was no indication that progress was made on the question of relief measures...