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Lusaka: Joshua Nkomo said yesterday his men brought down the Rhodesian airliner near Kariba at the weekend, but denied that his men killed 10 survivors on the ground.
(Dr) Nkomo, co-leader of the Patriotic Front alliance with (Cde) Robert Mugabe, said the Air Rhodesia Viscount aircraft was brought down because the planes flying to Kariba on ostensibly civilian flights were being used for ferrying troops and military supplies to the Kariba lakeside area, on the border with Zambia where (Dr) Nkomo is based, Iana-Reuter reports.
(Dr) Nkomo declined to say how the aircraft had been brought down. Only eight of the 56 people aboard survived.
“We brought that plane down, but it is not true that we killed any survivors. The Rhodesians have been ferrying military personnel and equipment in Viscounts and we had no reason to believe that this was anything different,” he said.
He said his Zipra (Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army) was “not interested in killing civilians, but when people start using civilian aircraft how do you know when the plane is up there? The Rhodesians should know this is a military zone,” he said.
(Dr) Nkomo said it was tragic that there had been a massive outcry in the West because white civilians had been killed.
Different?
“You forget that the regime kills 30 of our people a day. So the life of a black person is different from a white person? Any European child is supposed to be worth a million blacks,” (Dr) Nkomo said. “As far as we are concerned we were bringing down an aircraft that’s being used to ferry military personnel and equipment,” he continued.
Asked if the reported downing of the plane marked a turning-point in the six-year-old war he said: “We have said that it is going to be intensified every day, we will make it much more bitter.” -— Iana-Reuter
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