Word: congos
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After six weeks as Premier of the Congo, Moise Tshombe was hanging on by the skin of his big white teeth...
...what would the public say about the latest shipment of U.S. aid? In the Senate, Mississippi Democrat John Stennis, long a supporter of a strong foreign policy, rose to ask if the U.S. was about to enter "another undeclared war," then warned solemnly: "I strongly oppose letting the Congo become our African Viet...
...ominous echo of Stennis' outcry came from deep inside the Congo itself, where rebel leaders of the Red-backed National Liberation Committee now hold sway over vast portions of the lawless hinterland. For weeks the rebels had been warning Belgium that any use of white officers to lead Tshombe's bedraggled troops would lead to the slaughter of the hundreds of Belgian civilians. Now the committee's commander in Stanleyville, "General" Nicholas Olenga, was making threats about Americans as well. "We are a sovereign and independent country, which has an internal war on its hands...
Fleeing Population. The Congo government was in no position to help them. Despite strafing attacks by the T-28s, the rebels moved close to the eastern Congo city of Bukavu, and most of its white population were fleeing. Hundreds of miles to the west, dependents of missionaries and United Nations personnel flew out of two other provincial capitals that had been safe the week before. Reports of an advancing rebel column in Katanga were sending waves of fear through Tshombe's former stronghold of Elisabethville...
...usual, Tshombe's dispirited army regulars panicked at almost every confrontation. The powerful army unit ordered by Tshombe to drive the rebels out of Stanleyville poised menacingly just across the Congo River from the city, then turned and beat one of the fastest retreats in history - 560 miles to the rear in one day. At another major town, when a freak lightning bolt blew up an army powder magazine, the terrified garrison, convinced it was surrounded, fired back - in every direction...