Angola waits tensely to achieve full independence from Portugal on 11 november. Long-standing enmities between the country's three rival nationalist movements threaten to brink of chaos and anarchy.

Fighting has broken out throughout the county between the three groups. These are: the marxist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.), the Zaire-backed National Front for the Liberation of Angola (M.N.L.A.) and the national Union for the Total Independence of Angola (U.N.I.T.A.).

More than 1,000 people are reported to have killed in the four months of fighting between the groups -- notably between the M.P.L.A. and the F.N.L.A.

The coalition which has linked these feuding liberation movements with Portugal in a transitional Government has proved distressingly inadequate and has created a mass exodus of both blacks and whites from the capital. Portuguese Information Minister Jorge Correria has said whites are leaving the territory at the rate of 500 a day and 300,000 want to follow.

But the inadequacy of transport facilities has caused a number of demonstrations. On Friday (13 June) several thousand whites gathered outside the government Palace demanding repatriation to Portugal. Both the Portuguese Government and the travel agencies are being accused of inefficiency and disinterest.

Friday's demonstration ended when troop fired into the air to disperse the angry crowd. Two people were injured as the demonstrators wrestled with the troops and tried to take their guns away from them.

The night before a plastic bomb damaged the central Luanda offices of the Portuguese airline T.A.P.

Hopes for peace in the troubled West African country now rest on a meeting between the nationalist groups scheduled to begin in Nairobi on Sunday (15 June).

SYNOPSIS: Luanda -- Angola's capital -- is a tense city following four months of fighting in the territory.

In November Angola will achieve full independence from Portugal. In the meantime clashes between the three main rival nationalist groups have torn the city -- and the country -- apart.

Services have been disrupted as dock strikes and dangerous roads cause shortages of essential materials. So, people fend for themselves and carry their own supplies.

The troubles in this strife-torn West African nation have caused a major refugee problem. Local self-help organisations providing clothes and food for children have sprung up in the capital.

No-one can know the full extent of human suffering here...conservative reports say well over a thousand have died and many thousand have been injured.

The white Portuguese settlers see no future for themselves under black nationalist rule, and they're queuing in their hundreds to book passages home.

But transport facilities are meagre, and protests like this one--demanding that the lisbon government lay on special flights--happen regularly. Five-hundred a ??? are leaving and some two-hundred-thousand are planning to go soon.