Deteriorating security situation

A landmine blast killed a farm worker and injured 47 others on Friday in northeastern Namibia in the latest security incident in the troubled region bordering Angola, news reports said.

The explosion occurred in Omega in Western Caprivi, 270 km east of the main northern town of Rundu, when a truck carrying farm workers detonated an anti-tank mine planted by suspected Angolan UNITA rebels. A woman died of her injuries on the way to the local hospital and 10 people were critically wounded, ‘The Namibian’ daily reported on Monday.

The newspaper said that security had been beefed up in the area after a truck detonated an anti-personnel mine on the same farm last month. It quoted an unnamed soldier at Omega as saying that the labourers had apparently gone out to work before the army could begin its daily mine sweep.

A humanitarian source in Rundu told IRIN that there have been “many” mine incidents in the region. He said there were also frequent attacks on villages by suspected UNITA rebels: “Sometimes a week goes by without anything, sometimes it’s everyday. It’s very difficult, when we think things are under control they become worse.”

According to ‘The Namibian’, 50 people have died in attacks attributed to UNITA since late last year, following the government’s green light to the Angolan army to use Namibian territory to attack UNITA bases in southern Angola. “The problem is that the Angolan and Namibian army are soldiers, but UNITA are rebels and their tactics are better,” the IRIN source in Rundu said.

He added that the Namibian government suspects that UNITA units have disguised themselves among the influx of refugees fleeing into Namibia to escape fighting in southern Angola, and is rounding-up Angolans staying with relatives rather than going to the Osire refugee camp, 250 km from the capital Windhoek. The government has also accused some Namibians, in a border region with shared ethnic affiliations, of supporting UNITA.