3-Year-Old Leke


Biafran refugees bury 3 year-old leke wrapped in cloth. The boy died from famine in this refugee camp after his mother had carried him moreb than 100 miles. photo by Kurt Strumpf, 1968.

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Fleas versus Falcons over Biafra

Fleas versus Falcons over Biafra

Short history and assessment of the MFI-9B "MiniCOIN" in Biafran air force service
Part I

©Kristjan Runarsson 2002

1 - Synopsis
This is a condensed overview of MFI-9B operations and not an attempt at producing a definitive account of these operations. The main motivation for creating it was the fact that the only really detailed account of MFI-9B operations in Biafra is Gunnar Haglunds book "Gerillapilot i Biafra" which, as the name suggests, is written in Swedish and has to the best of my knowledge not been translated into English. I hope this short account will give English speaking readers some insight into these operations which left an air force well stocked with "serious military hardware" more of less impotent to react to attacks by a handful of piston engined, rocket equipped, primary trainers.

2 - MiniCOIN an eccentric idea becomes reality
Carl Gustav von Rosen can with some justification be said to be one of the 20&#…
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Benjamin Adekunle Shooting at Everything

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"I want see no Red Cross, no caritas, no World Council of Churches, no pope, no missionaey and no United Nations delegation. I want to prevent even one Igbo from having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves and when our troops march into the center of Igbo territory, we shoot at everything even at things that don't move"

-----Benjamin Adekunle

If the above comment is not bigotry and hatred, what else is?
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BIAFRA: The Fall of Aba

Time Friday, September 13, 1968

Like most other stages of the Nigerian civil war, the federal forces' much heralded "final offensive" against the breakaway territory of Biafra has proceeded more slowly and tortuously than scheduled. Despite the superiority in numbers and firepower of the advancing Nigerian armies, Lieut. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu's Biafran army has replied to every federal gain with commando raids, often forcing the Nigerians to move half a step backward for each one forward. But last week, after holding out for twelve days against withering artillery fire, the Biafrans were driven out of Aba, their administrative capital and largest remaining city. Together with other losses, the fall of Aba reduced Biafra's territory to approximately 5,000 square miles, or one-sixth of the secessionist state's original size.

Reinforced Belief. The city's 100,000 residents fled in terror when federal troops started shelling the capital from all …
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NIGERIA'S CIVIL WAR: HATE, HUNGER AND THE WILL TO SURVIVE

Time Friday, August 23, 1968

Guided by burning flares, a transport plane dipped down out of the night over Biafra last week and landed with a shipment of condensed food for the secessionist state's starving population. When soldiers guarding the airstrip saw its cargo, they burst unashamedly into tears. On a country road a few miles away, relief workers held out bits of food to a group of hungry children. They ran, not knowing what to do with it. "We are going to have to teach a generation of children how to eat again," said a Canadian nurse. In the border town of Ikot Ekpene, the emaciated bodies of a brother and sister lay side by side in a rough cradle. Their eyes had been pecked out by vultures still circling overhead, waiting to attack a line of wasted bodies in a ditch outside of town.

EMERGENT Africa has known more than its share of strife and bloodshed, from the Mau Mau terror in Kenya to the carnage of Congolese secession. But in scope of suffering, in depth of…
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