U.N. Flights to Angola City Resume

U.N. mercy flights have resumed to the southern Angolan city of Menongue, where 5,000 people have died in a nine-month rebel siege but countless more could perish if the food aid stops.

Aid workers say flights carrying tons of medicine and food over the last two weeks have averted a disaster on the scale of Cuito in central Angola, where 30,000 have died so far from hunger, wounds and disease during a similar siege by UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, led by Jonas Savimbi.

Military and church sources say Menongue is still surrounded and thousands more civilians could die if the rebels tighten their grip and prevent the U.N. World Food Program from flying in.

Bishop Jose de Queiros Alves estimated that at least 5,000 people died in the siege which began in January, cutting access to the city of 100,000. Menongue, capital of southern Cuando Cubango province, is the province’s only city still in government hands.

In Washington, President Clinton on Friday named veteran diplomatic trouble-shooter Paul Hare to aid a U.N. effort to halt the war in Angola and arrange a political settlement.

Hare, a career Foreign Service officer, has served in the State Department for more than 30 years.