S. Africa Says It Killed 190 in Angola : Two Major Clashes Could Mark Escalation in Long Conflict

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — South African-led forces in Namibia reported Tuesday that they killed 190 Namibian insurgents and Angolan troops in two major clashes in southern Angola.

Diplomats here said the incidents could represent the start of a sharp escalation in the prolonged confrontation between Pretoria and Angola’s Marxist government.

Military headquarters in Windhoek, the capital of South African-administered Namibia or South-West Africa, said its forces were pursuing about 120 insurgents of the South-West African People’s Organization on Saturday when the insurgents and Angolan government troops ambushed them about 35 miles north of the Angolan-Namibian border.

After the first battle, the South African force continued pushing northward into Angola, according to the headquarters spokesman, clashed a second time with Angolan troops and then continued the skirmishes before returning to Namibia on Sunday. At least 190 Namibian insurgents and Angolan soldiers were killed in the fighting, the spokesman said.

There was no immediate comment from Angola.

By the South African account, the battles were among the biggest that its forces have fought in recent years in southern Angola, and they apparently involved major Angolan units, perhaps two battalions. Most of the casualties were believed to be Angolan soldiers.

South African officers believe that the large concentration of Namibian insurgents, members of a unit normally deployed well back from the frontier, was used to lure a fast-reaction task force into the ambush mounted by the heavily armed Angolan troops. Had the tactic succeeded, the Angolans would have inflicted scores of casualties in what might have been a considerable South African defeat, a senior officer said.

But the South African task force, outnumbered but drawn from a local Namibian battalion rated as the best in the territory, fought its way out of the ambush, according to military sources in Windhoek. A barrage of rockets and grenades heavily damaged its vehicles, the sources said, but only one man, an officer, was wounded slightly. The South African task force then counterattacked and pursued the Angolans for more than a day.

Speculation arose here that the South African troops had actually gone to the assistance of its rightist allies in the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known by its initials in Portuguese as UNITA, and that the fighting in Angola was about to escalate significantly.

Jonas Savimbi, the UNITA leader, has warned frequently in the last three months of a coming Angolan government offensive, to be launched with Cuban and Soviet assistance, against his positions in southeast Angola. Savimbi, who also receives American arms, visited South Africa last month to make certain of Pretoria’s support.

The scale and depth of South Africa’s recent operations in Angola have suggested to some diplomats that they are intended to draw Angolan government forces out of the offensive against UNITA.

“Judging from what Pretoria has said and the number of casualties it claims to have inflicted, this was a major engagement that the South African forces pursued deliberately and rather vigorously,” a Western diplomat said in Cape Town. “They went far deeper into Angola than they normally do, they did not back away from (Angolan government) troops and they probably brought in reinforcements. . . .

“The South African goal may have been to help Savimbi, either directly or by threatening an even greater incursion. The implication is that South Africa feels no political restraints on its cross-border operations into Angola and that it is prepared to do much more than before. We are not talking about an all-out invasion again, or even the resumed occupation of Angolan territory, but we are looking at a considerable expansion of South African operations in Angola.”

Angolan forces normally operate 30 miles or more back from the frontier with Namibia in order to prevent chance clashes with South Africa’s routine cross-border patrols, which also have orders to avoid skirmishes with the Angolans.

Angola has repeatedly accused South African forces of operating deep inside its territory. It claimed earlier this week that eight South African battalions, totaling nearly 7,000 soldiers and supported by fighter-bombers and helicopter gunships, were across the border.

Military spokesmen in both Windhoek and Pretoria acknowledge that South African forces based in Namibia regularly operate in southern Angola to prevent the infiltration of Namibia guerrillas and to pursue those slipping out of the territory back into Angola.

But they dismiss as “exaggerated,” “fanciful” and “propaganda” the Angolan claims of such large-scale, cross-border deployments.

South Africa has continued to administer Namibia, a sparsely populated, mineral-rich territory, in defiance of repeated calls by the United Nations for its independence. For 21 years, Namibian nationalists of the South-West African People’s Organization have waged a guerrilla war against South African rule, but their only real gains recently have been political rather than military.