Unita commander 'killed' in Angola

A general from the Unita rebel movement has been killed and other senior officers captured in south-eastern Angola, according to government forces.

General Galiano Da Silva e Sousa was killed when government troops destroyed a number of rebel military bases in Angola's eastern Moxico province, 700 kilometres south-east of Luanda

He was Unita's national political commissioner.

Unita leader Dr Jonas Savimbi is believed to be part of a column that is moving through Moxico province towards the Zambian border, after losing his strongholds in central Angola.

Government sources say that the captured generals include Almeida Ezequiel Chiccende, also known as "Buffalo Bill" and second-in-command to Unita's military chief.

Civil war

A report by the official Angop news on Monday, did not provide other casualty figures in the government offensive in the past four days and there was no independent confirmation of the claims.

Savimbi is believed to be in Moxico

Luanda has been locked in a civil war with Unita for 26 years. The conflict has killed about a million people and has created more than four million refugees in and outside Angola.

The rebel war effort is funded by illicit diamonds while the government bankrolls its military with oil revenues.

About 4 million people - roughly a quarter of Angola's population - have been driven from their homes by the fighting that has raged on-and-off since Angola's 1975 independence from Portugal.