The Angolan army has launched an offensive against separatist rebels who operate in the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda, according to reports from the area.

A major offensive has been undertaken by the Angolan army and is continuing at this moment.

Father Manuel Kongo

The French news agency AFP quoted a Catholic priest, Father Manuel Kongo, as saying a major operation was under way and many people had been killed or wounded.

He said the military campaign targeted the Cabinda Enclave Liberation Front (FLEC), an armed group fighting for the independence of the province.

Cabinda is separated from the rest of Angola by the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It was handed to the Angolan Government by Portugal on independence in 1975 and accounts for a large part of the country's oil revenues.

"A major offensive has been undertaken by the Angolan army and is continuing at this moment in Cabinda," Father Manuel Kongo told AFP.

Kongo, who advocates the withdrawal of Angolan troops from Cabinda, did not provide details on civilian or military casualties.

Mediation

On Wednesday, a key FLEC leader who lives in exile in Europe, sent a letter to Cabinda's bishop Paulino Madeka, asking him to mediate in talks between the government in Luanda and the pro-independence rebels.

FLEC's Nzita Tiago also asked the bishop to help the various factions of FLEC to overcome their differences.

Cabinda provides a large portion of Angola's wealth through oil

The BBC's Justin Pearce, in Luanda, says the separatists argue that because Cabinda was administered separately from the rest of Angola in Portuguese colonial times, it should have formed a separate state on independence.

But the main reason for the independence drive in Cabinda is economic, he says.

The enclave produces about 60% of Angola's oil wealth despite having only about 1% of the country's total population.

Hence an independent Cabinda would be a very rich state indeed.

The Cabinda separatists, however, pose no serious threat to Angolan security, unlike the former Unita rebels who waged a guerrilla warfare over a wide area of Angolan territory.

Internal divisions have split the movement - originally known as the Liberation Front for the Cabinda Enclave - into three factions.