Many of the thousands of street children across Angola are probably victims of this trend, said Matondo Alexandre, a child-protection expert with the United Nations Children's Fund in Angola.

This is something new to us, Alexandre added. In African culture it is usually the older people who are accused of practicing witchcraft. Now we're even seeing cases popping up involving babies.

Why Angolans are turning with such horrific ferocity against their young, especially at this relatively benign point in their wounded history, is a question few experts can answer with certainty.

Some blamed the recent proliferation of fire-and-brimstone evangelical churches in Angola, whose apocalyptic vision of the universe — and profit from exorcisms — meshes nicely with an epidemic of witchcraft.

Others cited the spread of particularly noxious beliefs in magic from neighboring Congo, where the phenomenon of child sorcerers also is taking root in an atmosphere of economic and political lawlessness.

But most experts agreed that the true answers lie buried in the social wreckage of Angola's immensely degrading civil war, a 27-year fratricide that ended barely two years ago and has left Angola with a staggering case of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Witchcraft fears have broken out in many societies during times of distress, said Francisco de Mata Mourisca, the Roman Catholic bishop of Uige, whose sprawling hilltop compound has lately become a magnet for shy, hungry and sometimes battered children who come seeking refuge from witch hunts.

But you have to ask yourself, why our children? de Mata Mourisca said. The answer in Angola is simple. Because war has brutalized our families in the same way it destroyed our homes and streets.

Children in Angola tortured as witches [BugMeNot] - Chicago Tribune, 28th March 2004.