Word: ibos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...major cities, blockaded its coasts, and pushed an already-overcrowded population of more than 8,000,000-among them 4,500,000 refugees-into a patch of bush and swampland that is one-fourth the size of Biafra's former territory. The Biafrans, most of whom are Ibo tribesmen, fear that they will be massacred just as thousands of their kinsmen in northern Nigerian cities were killed two years ago. Many are starving, but they refuse to come out of hiding in the bush...
...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...
...Division ("The Scorpions"), took full charge of the attack, code-naming his immediate area "Hell Sector," the Port Harcourt airport "Iron Sector" and the main area of town "Hate Sector." As federal howitzer, mortar and artillery shells began pounding the fringes of the city at three-minute intervals, young Ibo tribesmen dressed in clean white shirts and ties slapped "Anti-Panic Squad" signs on their cars and drove through the streets shouting for calm. Unpersuaded, civilians scooped up their children and whatever possessions they could carry and-on foot, by bicycle or riding in ancient automobiles or mammy wagons-swarmed...
Chanting tribal war cries, the federal troops swept toward the city the next day, killing any 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...
...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...