Children being returned to families, UNITA says

In this story: Conflicting accounts behind refugee moves UNITA may be ready to talk RELATED STORIES, SITES

LISBON, Portugal (CNN) -- The 60 children taken from a school outside the Angolan town of Caxito Saturday are being returned to their families, a spokesman for the UNITA rebels said Tuesday.

"Those children are very well," spokesman Rui Oliveira said in a telephone interview from Lisbon. "(They will be) with their families. I can guarantee that."

Oliveira said the children were not kidnapped, but had been taken from their homes during incursions in to UNITA-controlled areas by government troops.

An official for a boarding school for war orphans has said 51 boys, nine girls and two adults were kidnapped when the rebels swept down on Caxito, a provincial capital of 50,000, on Saturday. The Angolan army said at least 79 people were killed in the raid, including an Angolan doctor and three Angolan aid workers.

Oliveira admitted many people were killed, but said most were soldiers. He said the aid workers may have been killed when government troops returned after the rebels had left.

The government troops fled in the face of the UNITA assault, Oliveira said, and rebels then spent two hours talking with civilians in Caxito to explain why they were taking the children, and why they are fighting the war.

"The children were kidnapped by the government," he told CNN. "They are the children of the people who live in the bush, in the areas controlled by UNITA."

Conflicting accounts behind refugee moves

Oliveira said UNITA "in a short time" would release the names of the children and "where they belong."

UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, says kidnapped children are used as menial labor and, in worst cases, may be sexually abused or used as soldiers or defensive shields in combat.

In addition to the children, Oliveira said, as the rebels left Caxito, "hundreds of people (who had been) kidnapped by the government went ... with UNITA, not forced but voluntarily."

UNITA contends that when government troops march through a rebel-controlled area, they force out the residents and relocate them in government-held towns.

But others said they have left Caxito to escape the rebels.

"We are not going to return," one refugee from Caxito said after the latest raid. "UNITA is there. This time UNITA killed a lot of people, and we will never go back."

UNITA may be ready to talk

Close to 4 million people -- one-third of Angola's population -- have been driven from their homes, humanitarian groups say.

Two similar abductions of children took place in Angola last year, UNICEF officials said, and the fate of most of those children is unknown.

UNITA rebels had recently indicated they were ready to discuss a peaceful end to Angola's civil war, which erupted soon after the country gained independence from Portugal in 1975.

The rebels' goal, Oliveira said, is "not to win the war, (but) to make the government stop" and negotiate.

"There will be more attacks," he said.

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