CYPRUS Death at High Noon One sunny morning last week, a Land-Rover carrying seven Greek Cypriots bounced up the road to the tiny village of Ayios Sozomenos. Though only twelve miles distant from the capital city of Nicosia, the village is centuries away in time. To reach it, one travels four miles along a rutted road off the main asphalt highway and then some two miles over goat trails before the cluster of tile-roofed houses is dis covered crowded between a dry watercourse and a steep mesa of grey rock.
The Greeks say the men in the Land-Rover had intended to turn on a water pump that serves a nearby town, but were ambushed by Turkish Cypriots hidden in the dry riverbed. The Turks charge that the men in the Land-Rover opened fire on the village shepherds, who replied with their shotguns. With two dead and two wounded, the Land-Rover raced out of range, called for help. Greek Cypriots, armed with a variety of weapons, poured from neighboring villages. By noon they had surrounded Ayios Sozomenos and begun a battle that raged for five hours. At last, British troops, assigned the nearly impossible task of keeping the peace between the island's 500,000 Greek and 100,000 Turkish Cypriots, arrived in sufficient force to compel a ceasefire.
Pitchfork Charge. TIME Correspondent Robert Ball watched the fighting from a nearby hillside, then entered the village to see the grisly results. His report: "The bitterest fighting was at the western edge of the village, where the attacking Greeks had the cover of gnarled olive trees. In one mud-brick hut, where nine Turks had taken refuge, a window was blasted by a bazooka-type rocket, and the second floor literally sieved with bullet holes. In desperation, one Turkish shepherd tried to flee to the riverbed, but was cut down a few feet from the door. Another grabbed a pitchfork, made a futile, one-man assault on the Greek position, and was mowed down at once.
"Altogether the Turks lost seven dead and several wounded, but they gave a good account of themselves with their shotguns, killing a total of six of the better-armed Greeks and wounding eleven. Next morning a band of 50 armed Turkish Cypriots arrived to escort the 200 survivors of Ayios Sozomenos to the nearest Turkish strongpoint at Louroujina, four miles away. As the villagers moved silently off with their flocks of sheep and few cattle, one member of the Turkish rescue column pleaded with a British lieutenant, 'Please take the dead to Louroujina. We came to save the living. If you do not take the dead, they will be eaten by dogs.' "
Message from Nikita. The bitter fighting at Ayios Sozomenos symbolized the explosive nature of the Cyprus problem. Desperately, with a force of only 2,700 men, the British hoped to keep the peace until reinforcements arrived in the form of U.S. and other NATO forces. At least 10,000 soldiers would be necessary for the job. But Cyprus' Greeks had terrifying visions of a NATO plot to impose a political solution on terms favorable to the Turkish Cypriots. So Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus, accepted the idea of a peacekeeping force only on condition that it be under the U.N. Security Council.