Word: biafrans
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...missionary hospital in Emekuku, a mob of starving children gathers at the door. The hospital has room for only 100 of them: the strongest-looking children are taken in, and the least hopeful cases turned away. "This started out as an epidemic in March," says a London-trained Biafran doctor, Aaron Ifekwunigwe. "Now it is a catastrophe...
...told his guests from the federal government and secessionist Biafra. "The principal and overriding demand is to bring it to an end. I pray for the success of your talks." Almost immediately, however, the negotiations bogged down. Nigeria's Chief Anthony Eronsele Enahoro demanded talks before a ceasefire; Biafran Delegation Leader Sir Louis Nwachuku Mbanefo demanded a ceasefire, then talks. "We have set no preconditions," Sir Louis told reporters...
Even as the peace talks began, federal troops were pushing deeper inside Biafra, thrusting into parts of Port Harcourt, the last major city in Biafran hands and Nigeria's second largest seaport after Lagos. A modern oil boomtown before the war, Port Harcourt supplied Biafra's fuel needs, acted as a vital link for its Lisbon-based airlift of arms and matériel, and-by the mere fact of its possession-served as a morale booster for Biafra and its 8,500,000 Ibo tribesmen, led by Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu...
...Ibos that they discovered en route. As the troops seized the airport and moved into parts of the city, great, 1,000-ft. pillars of black smoke angled into the sky from pipelines and oil and gas wells set ablaze by the retreating Ibos. At week's end, Biafran soldiers were still holding out in some sections of Port Harcourt, and the prospect was for long-drawn-out fighting. But the superior federal firepower seemed certain to prevail eventually, and then Port Harcourt would join the long string of Ibo ghost towns now occupied by the Lagos government...
Nigerian jets returning to their bases have even doubled back to strafe ci vilian crowds gathered at railway crossings, in village marketplaces and in a churchyard after morning services. Nigeria's Egyptian pilots have so often bombed and strafed Biafran hospitals-whose roofs are often clearly marked with large red crosses-that Ibo mothers in some areas risk death for their seriously ill children rather than take them to such prime target areas...