Word: guns
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Parliament by Dec. 27 to start the reunification of Katanga with the rest of the country; if Tshombe did not live up to his pledge, the U.N.'s 6,000 Indian, Ethiopian, Swedish and Irish soldiers around Elisabethville might well resume their hail of shells, rockets and machine-gun fire. When one of Tshombe's platoons last week clashed with a group of Ethiopian soldiers who occupied the big Union Minière copper refinery at nearby Lubumbashi, the Ethiopians fought so bitterly that the ground was littered with Katangese dead as the survivors retreated in disorder...
...Unhealthy Roof. On the ground, the battle in Elisabethville seesawed inconclusively. One minute, the streets were full; next minute, people were scattering in all directions at the sound of incoming shells or a long, looping machine-gun burst from a distant weapon. Often a barrage caught Katanga's loyal whites of the home guard in mid-Scotch or mid-meal at an Elisabethville bistro. "Ah, it is time to go," shrugged one 24-year-old as the crump of nearby gunfire sent the lunchtime customers to the floor at one restaurant. Shouldering his rifle, he left in the direction...
That did it. Suddenly, Elisabethville's streets were alive with Katanga patrols. Seeking revenge, one Katangese squad swooped on a U.N. villa where ten sleeping U.N. staffers, mostly Swedish, were awakened, arrested and hustled away. At the same time, roadblocks, guarded by armored cars and Tommy-gun-waving soldiers, went up on the main roads from the town to U.N. installations outside. When a car with three Swedish soldiers tried to drive through one barrier at a strategic highway tunnel, the Katangese shot the driver in the stomach, then mowed down the other two after the vehicle crashed into...
...doctors at Prince Leopold Hospital complained about the aim of some of the U.N.'s gun crews. For ten hours one night, mortar shells blasted the hospital walls and roof; patients crawled screaming into the corridors; one African woman in the process of giving birth rose in terror and fled before her delivery, was not seen again. A U.N. spokesman admitted the firing, said the rounds were aimed at a Katangese army camp 800 yds. beyond the hospital. But some of the shells even hit a Roman Catholic cathedral in an African residential section, and others exploded near...
...still their prisoner. They hauled him to a military camp outside town, beat him on and off for two more hours. Every time a car approached the camp, the soldiers, fearing the arrival of the U.N.'s tough Gurkha soldiers of the local Indian contingent, put submachine-gun muzzles to Urquhart's head and vowed to shoot if the U.N. tried to intervene. Not until angry U.N. aides induced Tshombe and two of his Cabinet ministers to drive to the camp was Urquhart released. "I was sure I was going to die there,'' he said after...