1978 TIME report described murders of 10 crash victims The Layman Online Monday, December 7, 1998 The Sept. 18, 1978, issue of TIME magazine called the downing of an Air Rhodesia Viscount airliner and murders of some of the crash survivors "a genuine horror story, calculated to make the most alarming of Rhodesian doomsday prophecies seem true." The TIME reported included vivid descriptions by crash survivors who hid in the bush while guerrillas murdered men, women and children, including some missionaries, with automatic gunfire. "It's only because I know a terrorist when I see one that I'm still alive," Anthony Hill, then an Army reservist, told TIME. 'Please don't shoot us!' "At first the guerrillas, clad in jungle green uniforms, seemed friendly, promising help," TIME reported. "But then they herded together the ten people at the wreckage, robbed them of their valuables and finally cutting them down with automatic weapon fire. From another hiding place, businessman Hans Hansen and his wife Diana could hear the victims crying, 'Please don't shoot us!' as the firing began. Dazed by the ordeal, Hansen said later: 'I'll never be able to get that moment out of my mind.'" The TIME report, titled "Seeds of Political Destruction,'' said that of the 56 people aboard the plane, 38 died in the crash. Five of the 18 survivors struggled free and left in search of water. Three of the remaining 13 survived by hiding in the bush. TIME quoted Joshua Nkomo, co-leader of the Patriotic Front guerrillas, who received both moral and financial support from the World Council of Churches, as boasting that his men had shot down the plane but denying that they had murdered survivors.

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