Between 1975 and 1988, the SADF continued to stage massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia to eliminate PLAN's forward operating bases across the border from Namibia as well as provide support for UNITA. A controversial bombing and airborne assault conducted by 200 South African paratroopers on 4 May 1978 at Cassinga in southern Angola, resulted in around 700 South West Africans being killed, including PLAN militants and a large number of women and children. Colonel Jan Breytenbach, the South African parachute battalion commander, claimed it was "recognised in Western military circles as the most successful airborne assault since World War II."Jan Breytenbach, They Live by the Sword: 32 Battalion, South Africa's Foreign Legion, Johannesburg: Lemur 1990, p.180 The Angolan government described the target of the attack as a refugee camp. The United Nations Security Council on 6 May 1978 condemned South Africa for the attack.UN Security Council, Resolution 435 On 23 August 1981 South African troops again launched an incursion into Angola with collaboration and encouragement provided by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).Cambridge Journals, Review of Stockwell, In Search of Enemies accessed 27 April 2015John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, London: Futura, 1979 pp. 193–96, 228–29, 214, 241 The Angolan army, in resisting what it perceived as a South African invasion, was supported by a combination of Cuban forces and PLAN and ANC guerrillas, all armed with weapons supplied by the Soviet Union. The apartheid-era South African military and political intelligence services, for their part, worked closely with American, British and West German secret services throughout the Cold War.Anthony Egan, Review of "The Hidden Thread: Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era" by Irina Filatova & Apollon Davidson, Focus: Journal of the Helen Suzman Foundation, issue 70, October 2013
