S. Africa Raids Angolan Base, Says It Killed 61

Sixty-one Angolan soldiers and Namibian nationalist guerrillas were killed in a battle with South African forces about 50 miles inside Angola over the weekend, South African authorities reported Monday.

The heavily reinforced South African troops attacked an Angolan army base at Mongua on Sunday, officials said, in an attempt to prevent the Namibian guerrillas from infiltrating back into neighboring Namibia for their annual rainy-season offensive against Pretoria’s local administration there.

The guerrillas were identified as members of the military wing of the South-West Africa People’s Organization.

The headquarters of the South-West Africa Territorial Forces in Windhoek, the capital of South African-ruled Namibia, or South-West Africa, said that two of its soldiers, both Namibians, were killed in the clash. Other military sources said there were South African casualties too, but these have not been reported.

Warning Seen

The battle, one of the most serious in the last three years between the South African-led forces in Namibia and the Angolan army, was interpreted by Western diplomats here as a warning from Pretoria that it is prepared for a full-scale resumption of its cross-border operations in Angola. These began with Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975 and continued for a decade.

For the past six weeks, according to previous reports, South African forces have been fighting a series of running engagements with the Namibian guerrillas. But most of these appeared to be confined to the border area, with South African troops conducting larger and larger sweeps into Angola to prevent the guerrillas from moving across the frontier.

In one series of skirmishes two weeks ago, 56 guerrillas and nine South African soldiers were reported killed over five days, mostly in cross-border clashes. So far this month, the South African forces are said to have killed 161 guerrillas and Angolan troops, with South African losses given as 11. Last year the Windhoek military headquarters claimed to have killed 645 guerrillas, a “kill ratio” it described as 20 to 1.

Repeat of 1984?

The direct South African attack on the Angolan base at Mongua suggested to some military analysts here that Pretoria may be ready to repeat its 1984 offensive. On that occasion, an armored spearhead of more than 2,000 troops drove more than 100 miles into Angola, then formally withdrew, with much fanfare, but quietly resumed low-level, cross-border operations a month later.

Maj. Gen. Georg Meiring, Pretoria’s former military commander in Namibia, warned Angola in a farewell speech at Windhoek earlier this month that South African forces would attack its units if they continued to provide support and shelter to the Namibian guerrillas. The guerrillas, now thought to total about 8,000, have been fighting for the territory’s independence from South African rule for more than two decades.

Meiring also said that South Africa saw the strengthening of Angolan ground and air forces in the south of the country near the Namibian border, including an improved air defense missile system, as a threat to its own forces. He said South Africa will directly meet any “challenge.”

‘Protective Umbrella’

In its report on Sunday’s clash, the Windhoek military headquarters said it was “again evident that the (Angolan army) actively supports the (Namibian) terrorists by giving them base facilities and that the South-West Africa People’s Organization uses the protective umbrella provided by the Angolan deployments during (South African) follow-up operations.”

The South Africans said that Angolan commanders were informed “that it is the policy of the security forces to retaliate if (the Angolan army) interferes with (Pretoria’s) security force actions.”

At Mongua, the South African statement said, the Angolans opened fire first, and only afterward were reinforcements requested from Namibia.

The fighting on the Angolan-Namibian front is closely linked to Angola’s own civil war, which pits the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, a rightist group led by Jonas Savimbi and known by its initials in Portuguese as UNITA, against the country’s Marxist government.

Rainy-Season Offensive

South Africa’s cross-border operations in Angola appear to military analysts here, on the basis of their scope and location, to be meant to bolster UNITA’s rainy-season offensive against government positions. Pretoria’s major propaganda channels have portrayed the government in Luanda as being increasingly on the defensive and unable to cope with the country’s problems.

UNITA has long had extensive South African backing and now receives renewed U.S. assistance under the Reagan Administration’s policy of supporting guerrillas fighting against Marxist governments. It is one of the principal ties between Pretoria and Washington that has not been damaged by the U.S. imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa.