Survivor Tells Of Congo Massacre

Press, Volume C, Issue 29510, 11 May 1961, Page 15

Survivor Tells Of Congo Massacre

(hZ.Pjt.-Reuter—Copyngnt)

STOCKHOLM, May 10.

A group of British and Swedish United Nations officers captured at Port Franequi, in the Congo, had been forced to walk along a path and were then shot, the sole survivor f of the massacre said yesterday.

The man, a Swedish warrant officer, Egon Aaberg, said he later met one of his wouldbe executioners who “complained that he had missed hts target.” Aaberg—who was flown to Stockholm on Monday night suffering from shock—said he had been seized on April 27 with another Swede and three British officers serving with the Ghanaian force stationed at Port Franequi.

They had been removed to a hospital but the next morning four Congolese soldiers had tied them together and forced four of them to march along a road into the jungle. Aaberg said. As they reached the jungle they met anotbet soldier leading a Swedish n.c 0., Lars Torsten Liedgren

“Liedgren was ordered to walk along the path then, as he vanished from cstr eyes, the soldier opened fire,” Aaberg said “Immediately afterwards 1 was ordered by my guard to take the same road. I untied the rope with my tree left hand and saw at the same time that my guard was loading his gun. “I took the chance and ran into the bush. I ran blindly on with bullets whistling around me. By then all the soldiers had begun to shoot." Aaberg said he hid in the jungle for three days until a Congolese warrant officer saw him and provided him safe conduct. About 20 Europeans who fought in the Katanga Armyare reliably reported to be making a run for. it through Baluba tribal country in northern Katanga, said the British United Press, in a renort from Elisabethville. If they had remained they faced arrest by the United Nations. In front of them lay the tribesmen they have been trying to quell on Katanga’s behalf.

The Europeans—said to include Britons. South Africans and Rhodesians—were officers in the Katanga force which was encircled by Malayan

United Nations troops at the rail junction of Nyunzu last week.

The impression is growing that Katanga will review the situation of its foreign “mercenaries.” said the news agency

Senior Katanga Government officials make no secret that they have so far failed to live up to their expectations. Some reports suggest "that Katanga may be considering something approaching the winding up of the whole “mercenary” force, possibly before the existing contracts expire, according to the news agency.