Reconstruction in Kuito continues

A delegation tasked to exhume corpses buried in yards, gardens and playgrounds during the post-election war in Kuito, capital city of Angola's central Bié province, is since Wednesday, April 9, in the region. The team is carrying out a study to find ways to start the unearthing of the dead bodies that had been hurriedly buried when the war for the control of the city was still running hot.

The programme of the delegation, headed by forensic doctor Aurélio Rodrigues, includes the gathering of samples and visits to various cemeteries in the city. The team has so far met with the local governor, José Amaro Tati and members of the provincial commission for exhumation and visited the site where a new cemetery will be built for the remains that will be unearthed. Sources from the province estimate the cost of the operation at about USD one million, which will cover the construction of the new cemetery.

Drawings by children from Kuito on war and reconstruction as well as pictures of the city largely destroyed by UNITA bombardments in the mid-1990s are presently on display in a photographic exhibition designed by the Southern Africa Documentation and Cooperation Centre (SADOCC) in Vienna. The exhibition will be shown till May 15 at the university of Linz, the capital city of Upper Austria. (Angola Press Agency, Luanda)