Africa - Egypt

Feb. 25 A guerrilla army learns its trait An old slave town on the African coast is now a camp for hundreds of young man training to overthrow the Portuguese in Mozambique. The grounds of a former British country club on East African coast have been turned into Africa latest training school for guerrilla warfare. The club is at Bagameye, 40 miles north of the Tanzania capital of Dar es Salaam. The trainers are Africans from neighbouring Mozambique, who come to Tanzania up to learn ways of wearing down the Portuguese colonial regime in their homeland. These are the young freedom fighters of the Mozambique Liberation Front, Frelimo. Many of them walk for miles through the bush, often avoiding Portuguese and border patrols. For the site of its training camp, Frelimo has change a once thriving port and former administrative centre which is today little more than a ghost town. The camp at Bagameye can accommodate about 300 recruits at a time. Equipment is scarce, but there is no lack of spirit among the young volunteers. At this camp they use dummy rifles. They are given the real ones (mostly Communist weapons) later when they move onto one of the advanced training camps which Frelimo has established, with the help of the Tanzania government, in Southern Tanzania. After their basic training, which consists mainly of physical exercises, they start their guerrilla training. They learn to crawl through the bush, dummy rifles at the ready, to ambush and surprise. The president of Frelimo is a 45-yuear old university graduate, Dr. Eduardo Mondlane. He is also chairman of the war committee which is directing all rebel activity against Portuguese authorities

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