Angolan Civil War · War Crimes & Atrocities
Over 27 years the Angolan Civil War inflicted immense suffering on civilians. All sides massacred prisoners and perceived enemies, besieged and starved cities, and sowed the countryside with millions of landmines. The government's 1992 'Halloween Massacre' of UNITA supporters in Luanda, UNITA's sieges and terror in the interior, and South Africa's controversial cross-border raids all fell heaviest on non-combatants, and the war's greatest killer of all — the landmine — went on maiming civilians for decades.
600+
deaths
Victims: Namibian refugees and/or SWAPO fighters at Cassinga(Around 600 people were killed; South Africa maintained it was a SWAPO military base, while SWAPO and Angola insisted it was a refugee camp — a dispute that has never been resolved.)
10,000+
deaths
Victims: UNITA members, officials, and suspected supporters in Luanda(Estimates of those killed in Luanda over several days range widely, from hundreds to as many as ten thousand or more; no full accounting has ever been made.)
30,000+
deaths
Victims: The civilian population of Kuito(Tens of thousands are believed to have died in the prolonged siege of Kuito from shelling, starvation, and disease; it was among the deadliest sieges of the era.)
80,000+
deaths
Victims: Angolan civilians across the country(Tens of thousands of civilians were killed or maimed by landmines over the decades; Angola came to have one of the highest rates of amputees in the world.)