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FT 11 AUG 93 / Fighting intensifies around two besieged Angolan cities
By REUTER
LUANDA
ANGOLA'S resurgent civil war has intensified, with a new rebel push against
the besieged city of Cuito and government attempts to pound into submission
Unita guerrillas in their Huambo stronghold, Reuter reports from Luanda.
The government says 14,000 people have been killed in the seven-month rebel
onslaught against Cuito.
If confirmed, the death toll would make the battle for the city the most
deadly of the civil war. Unita said yesterday it had seized part of Cuito,
where the government says rebel shelling has killed more than 200 civilians
in the past few days.
Rebel radio, monitored in the island state of Sao Tome and Principe, said
Unita forces had smashed a battalion of government soldiers as they forced
their way into the city on the eastern fringe of the central highlands.
The radio claimed government air raids on the nearby rebel capital, Huambo,
had killed more than 200 civilians over the past week.
Unita took control of Huambo, Angola's second city with a population of
500,000, in March after a siege in which an estimated 12,000 people were
killed.
Diplomats in Luanda say about 2,500 government soldiers and paramilitary
police are defending Cuito against a much larger force of well armed Unita
troops.
The rebels and the ruling MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola) government signed a peace agreement in 1991 to end the civil war,
which had been fought since 1975.
But Unita returned to the bush after rejecting its defeat by the MPLA in
supervised elections last September.
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