Word: ndjili
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...gala day in L éopoldville, and as President Joseph Kasavubu's plane touched down at Ndjili airport, dozens of diplomats and 10,000 of the citizenry endured the sweltering heat to welcome the Hero of Manhattan who had won U.N. acceptance as the Congo's leader. When the drenching rain began that evening, the gay crowds had scattered, and Kasavubu was enjoying himself at a homecoming banquet given in his home. Over at Patrice Lumumba's house, the Congolese guards took shelter in a garage; in the downpour, no one noticed the black limousine that slipped...
Next, Lumumba tried to grab control of Leopoldville's U.N.-run Ndjili Airport. First he got permission to station a few unarmed Congolese at the field. To everyone's astonishment, he then arrived himself at the head of 114 soldiers, all armed to the teeth. Soon Congolese soldiers were arresting every "suspicious" U.N. man in sight. A group of Norwegian soldiers fresh in from Europe were held as "Belgian paratroopers," and a Pakistan colonel was threatened with bayonets. "I give up!" shouted a U.N. brigadier from Ghana, throwing his garrison cap into the air in disgust after...
...Banal Incident." For the U.N. the last straw came next day when Congolese troops spotted 14 Canadian servicemen in a plane about to leave Ndjili, decided that they, too, were Belgians. They knocked the Canadians to the ground to search them, pounded a Canadian captain into unconsciousness with a rifle butt, stripped the others of their wallets and watches. As Ghanaian troops moved in to intervene, the U.N.'s Indian Brigadier Inder J. Rikhye swooped down by helicopter from his Leopoldville headquarters. Livid with rage, he roared at the Congolese: "I order you off this airfield immediately!" Meekly they...
...character set foot on Katangese soil." When the two harassed leaders took off from Luluabourg and headed for Stanleyville, they never made it: a Belgian crew member overheard Lumumba say he wanted to break off diplomatic relations with Belgium, and the Belgian pilot turned the plane toward Leopoldville, where Ndjili Airport was in the hands of Belgian paratroops...