Tales of children being rounded up at gunpoint and forced to carry plundered goods into the bush this week formed a stark reminder of the power still wielded by Unita rebels in Angola. The abduction of 60 children from a school compound in Caxito ...less than 80km from the capital, Luanda ... took place on Saturday, after a dawn raid on the town left at least 79 people dead. Some reports put the death toll at more than 100.

On Thursday, aid workers still had no information on the whereabouts of the missing pupils.

Eyewitness accounts received by aid officials and diplomats in the capital suggest that the children were used as porters after the guerrillas seized food and other supplies from the school.

According to one account, the rebels arrived at the school after the slaughter in the town. Unita itself spoke of a two-pronged assault on the town, but it appears that only one of the rebel units arrived at the school premises... a large compound that includes workshops and staff and student accommodation, as well as classrooms.

A teacher, aware of the slaughter that had taken place in the town, pleaded for the lives of the children ...whereupon the rebels took the pupils captive.

Previously, Unita fighters have shown no scruples about killing children. An attack on a school in February last year left three children dead, while 17 children are still missing following a second raid in July.

But both those assaults last year took place near the city of Huambo, in the central highland area of Angola traditionally seen as a Unita stronghold.

The attack on Caxito has been read as an attempt by Unita to undermine the confidence of the Angolan government by bringing its insurrection closer to the capital.

Also this week, the independent Angolan broadcaster Radio Ecclesia reported two attacks in and around the provincial capital of Uige, about 370km north-east of Luanda, with at least one person killed.

Although the Angolan armed forces have in recent years wiped out Unita’s conventional military capability, the rebels still appear effective as a guerrilla force.

One Western diplomat in Luanda said the Caxito incident showed that the Angolan army does not currently have the capacity to halt Unita’s guerrilla campaign.

The Angolan government remained bullish about the incident, with President José Eduardo dos Santos saying on Wednesday that the government had a constitutional responsibility not to declare a cease-fire with people whom he described as "armed bandits".

Luanda has long rejected new talks with Unita, on the grounds that the rebel movement chose to go back to war after losing in Angola’s first multi-party elections in 1992. Unita, for its part, has sought to justify its return to arms by asserting that the election results were invalid.

But despite the fighting talk, Western diplomats in Luanda believe that the two sides may be edging towards new negotiations ...though any such talks would still be at least a year away. In this context the attack on Caxito is being seen as a show of strength by Unita in order to scare the government into talks, and to raise the stakes if and when talks do eventually happen.

Unita’s own accounts of the incident are contradictory. On Tuesday the rebel movement’s representative in Portugal, Rui Oliveira, denied that any kidnapping had taken place, saying that Unita members had simply taken the children back to their family homes in rebel-controlled areas.

But Rikke Viholm, chair of the NGO People to People Development Aid, which runs the Caxito school, dismissed this statement as a lie.

She pointed out that the abducted group had included an adult teacher, and that several of the missing children came from families in Luanda who now had no idea where they were.

Then on Wednesday, a statement e-mailed to journalists in Lisbon appeared to indicate a change of heart on the part of the rebels.

Purporting to come from Unita Chief of Staff General Geraldo Abreu, the statement called for an immediate investigation into the incident at Caxito, and said that if any children had been found to be abducted, then Unita fighters must hand them over to the nearest Catholic mission station.

If the statement is genuine, it could indicate an attempt at political damage-control in the face of the strong condemnation of the abduction by the United Nations Children’s Fund and by the Catholic Church ...a powerful social force in Angola. But so far there is no indication that Unita forces are complying with the order.