Word: biafran
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...General Odumegwu Ojukwu, carried by Radio Biafra, vibrated between impassioned outrage and constrained eloquence. The 18 men that Biafra's boss referred to-14 Italians, three West Germans and a Lebanese -were employees of the Italian government's oil combine, ENI. They were captured last month by Biafran troops in the Okpai oilfields near Port Harcourt in an encounter in which eleven other oil workers (ten Italians and a Jordanian) were killed. Later a five-man Biafran tribunal that sits for security cases condemned the 18 prisoners to death by firing squad for helping Nigeria wage war. Once...
Dawn Raid. Exactly how much fighting, if any, the oil crew had engaged in was by no means clear. The Biafrans accused them of putting out markers to indicate Biafran positions and of leading Nigerian forces. Other sources related the incident differently. A Nigerian watchman in the oil camp, who survived by hiding under a truck, maintained that Biafran commandos attacked the camp in a surprise dawn raid. They sprayed it with automatic-weapons fire and shot down the eleven who were killed as they emerged from their bunkhouses to see what was happening...
...plight of the Biafrans rekindled his sympathies for the outgunned and inspired an improbable, wildly romantic scheme: to marshal pilots and planes and create an instant air force for the planeless Biafrans. Last week, as the Biafran rebellion against Nigeria neared its second anniversary, Von Rosen and his flyers attacked the Nigerian airport at Benin, reported damage to one MIG and several civilian planes sitting on the ground. That raid and two earlier forays, which damaged British- and Russian-made Nigerian planes at Enugu and Port Harcourt, eased the pressure on Biafra's landing strip at Uli. With...
...Rosen's air corps, which includes two Biafran pilots, has also given a psychological lift to Biafran troops fighting on despite the loss of their capital. Soon after Umuahia fell in April, Biafrans retaliated by recapturing the junction town of Owerri following a lengthy siege. Last week Biafran units were moving slowly southward from Owerri toward the oilfields around Port Harcourt. The Biafran strategy is not so much to regain lost territory as to prolong the standoff and inflict federal casualties until the Nigerians agree to peace talks and grant them independence. Toward such a goal, Count von Rosen...
...Biafran government put up $60,000 for the purchase of five secondhand MFl-9Bs in a third-party transaction handled through a Zurich bank. Biafran Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu appointed Von Rosen an air force colonel and approved an additional $140,000 for refitting the planes in friendly Gabon and for the pilots' salaries. Finally Von Rosen told his wife Gunvor of his plans-up to a point. "He told me he was going to Biafra," Countess von Rosen said last week, "but he didn't say he would be bombing MIGs...