Thread by @Kauswe3

SOUTH AFRICAN COMMANDOS RAID ZAMBIA

April 25 1987

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The South African commandos arrived by helicopter and used motorbikes in their raid in Livingstone and the suburb of Dambwa, Zambian officials said.

Livingstone residents said they heard prolonged shooting and a series of explosions. Citizens who visited Dambwa after the attack described it as a scene of considerable destruction, with several houses reduced to rubble.

The South African forces apparently flew in from the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia, 30 miles from Livingstone. The S.A. Defense Force in Pretoria said that the raids were a "reconnaissance mission" to investigate a guerrilla infiltration route from Zambia to South Africa

South Africa claimed they clashed twice with ANC insurgents, first at a suspected operations center in Livingstone and then at a suburban transit house on the town’s outskirts.

The South African raiders blew up the transit house and a nearby building used as a weapons depot before returning safely to their bases, according to the statement, which added that there was no contact with Zambian troops during the operation.

Zambian officials said that four people were killed--two guards at an insurance company and a man and his wife--and that a fifth person, a woman, was seriously wounded in the attack. All were described as Zambian citizens with no connections to the African National Congress.

The raid on Livingstone may have been undertaken as a clandestine foray or perhaps was intended to gather intelligence for a larger operation when the reconnaissance unit was discovered in the town

Gen. Magnus Malan, South Africa’s defense minister, described the raid as limited in its objectives and scope and intended as a warning to Zambia and the other so-called front-line states surrounding South Africa to halt support for the African National Congress.

Pretoria had told Zambia in diplomatic messages twice that month that, according to its intelligence, about 150 ANC guerrillas were trying to infiltrate South Africa from Zambia to disrupt parliamentary elections the following month.

Zambia and the African National Congress, the principal guerrilla organization fighting minority white rule in Pretoria, rejected Pretoria’s allegations, as did Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

In a statement from its Lusaka headquarters, the ANC denounced the raid as a “naked act of aggression and terror” against Zambia and said that the four dead were “murdered by Pretoria’s crazed killer squads.”

South Africa last attacked Zambia on May 17, 1986, when it bombed a U.N. refugee camp outside Lusaka, killing two people but missing a nearby ANC complex.

South African forces also hit suspected ANC targets in Botswana, killing one person, and in Zimbabwe, where buildings were damaged but no one was killed.

Pretoria's intention, the statement said, was to justify its earlier assertions that ANC guerrillas were infiltrating South Africa to wage a terrorist campaign to disrupt the elections. The ANC has denied having such plans.

"Zambia unreservedly condemns this dastardly and unprovoked attack in which four innocent people were killed," Information Minister Milimo Punabantu said in Lusaka.

Source - New York Times and Los Angeles Times