Word: katanga
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DOWN upon the United Nations military headquarters in Katanga screamed a Katangese fighter plane, its guns blazing. As correspondents and troops alike ran for cover to escape the strafing, TIME'S Africa Correspondent Lee Griggs leaped for the nearest foxhole and saw too late that it was already occupied. He landed squarely on top of the U.N.'s chief officer in Katanga, Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien. Later, a Congolese colonel, who had watched the scene from his own foxhole, cracked: "That was the best shot...
Siege. O'Brien, 43, an intense Irishman with literary leanings (he is noted for a study of Irish Insurrectionist Charles Stewart Parnell) had badly misjudged Moise Tshombe, the strength of his gendarmerie, and above all their determination to fight for Katanga's independence. After the announcement, the central government in Léopoldville named Egide Bocheley as Katanga's "High Commissioner" to replace Tshombe. Bocheley, a follower of far-left Vice Premier Antoine Gizenga, flew off for Elisabethville. When his plane landed, it was not safe for him to leave the airport, and he spent the night...
...cold fact, the cease-fire-which O'Brien said had been agreed to by Tshombe himself-never existed. Instead, the President was rallying his troops for what soon became a full-scale attack. The main U.N. Katanga garrison, 500 Irish and Swedish soldiers stationed at Kamina air base 260 miles northwest of Elisabethville, was under siege by a strong force of heavily armed Baluba tribesmen, troops led by white officers and supported by a French-made jet fighter. Reported the control tower at week's end: "It will be difficult to hold out much longer...
...members were sharply divided over what to do in Katanga. Britain called for a ceasefire. France condemned the action. Ireland, worried about its soldiers and this fall's national elections, dispatched its Foreign Minister to the Congo. In the neighboring Central African Federation, Sir Roy Welensky, openly friendly to Katanga's pro-European attitude, arranged to send food and medical supplies to the Tshombe troops, remarking that "I really don't care if the United Nations likes that or not." The U.S. cautiously supported the U.N. operation, finally urged that fighting be stopped. Radio Moscow charged that...
...Congo River in Brazzaville. His scheduled take-off for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York was forbidden by authorities in the former French Congo, who said that they could not guarantee his safety "because of the discontent and agitation provoked by events in Katanga." When Hammarskjold heard the news, his only reaction was to stare vacantly in the direction of an Indian pipe drum band, which was playing Over the Sea to Skye-a Scottish funeral dirge...