The sound of Christmas in Katanga province was the thunk of mortar shells and the rattle of machine guns. After an uneasy twelve-month truce between U.N. forces and the troops of Katanga's Secessionist Moise Tshombe, a few minor incidents got out of hand, and for the third time since September 1961 the province was in turmoil. Blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers swarmed through Elisabethville, seized roadblocks on the highways. Swedish U.N. Saab jets swooped low over Katanga's airfield at Kolwezi, destroying four planes on the ground and setting oil tanks ablaze. In the first...
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