There was no issue of the newspaper on March 23, 1967, on account of Id-ul-Azha. The following excerpt and image are from the previous day’s issue.

DJIBOUTI: France airlifted more paratroopers to Somaliland today [March 21] as the death toll in incidents following Sunday’s referendum grew to 12. Yesterday 300 red-bereted paras, France’s elite fighting force, winged into this East Sahara port aboard Boeing jet.

The 12th person to die was a Somali who was shot dead in defiance of the curfew clamped down by chief of territory, Louis Saget, following yesterday’s pitched battle between security forces and Somalis. Twenty-five people were injured in the bloody riot.

Meanwhile, the heavily armed security forces have launched a massive clean-up operation in the teeming African quarter. There are about 40,000 Somalis in Djibouti.

According to reliable sources here, Mr Moussa Idriss, leader of the pro-independence People’s Movement Party (PMP) is to protest to the Orga­nisation of African Unity (OAU) about security precautions being taken in French Somaliland.

The sources added that Idriss would probably ask the OAU to send an enquiry commission to Somaliland. A Cairo report adds: Egyptian newspapers today challenged the fairness of the Somaliland’s referendum and charged that the French had whipped up inter-community feuding in the territory.

The semi-official “Al-Jamhooria” daily accused France of falsifying the Somaliland wish for independence by jailing opposition party members. — Agencies

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies in Hong Kong,] China has protested to the Indian Govern­­ment for using Tibetans for anti-China activity.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry in a Note yesterday [March 20] to the Indian Embassy here protested strongly against the instigation by the Indian Government of Tibetan refugees, “whom it shields and abets to carry out anti-Chinese activities before the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi”, the New China News Agency reported today.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2017