The aircraft involved, a Vickers Viscount named the Hunyani, was flying the last leg of Air Rhodesia's regular scheduled service from Victoria Falls to the capital Salisbury, via the resort town of Kariba.

Soon after Flight 825 took off, a group of ZIPRA guerrillas hit it on its starboard wing with a Soviet-made Strela-2 surface-to-air infrared homing missile, critically damaging the aircraft and forcing an emergency landing.

ZIPRA leader Joshua Nkomo publicly claimed responsibility for shooting down the Hunyani in an interview with the BBC's Today programme the next day, saying the aircraft had been used for military purposes, but denied that his men had killed survivors on the ground.

The Rhodesian Security Forces launched several retaliatory strikes into Zambia and Mozambique over the following months, attacking both ZIPRA and its rival, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA).

The idea of "no independence before majority rule" had recently gained ground in Britain and elsewhere amid decolonisation, and Rhodesia's government was dominated by the country's white minority, so the unilateral declaration went unrecognised internationally.

The resulting conflict, the Rhodesian Bush War, began in earnest in December 1972, when ZANLA attacked Altena and Whistlefield Farms in north-eastern Rhodesia.

The leftist Carnation Revolution of April 1974 caused Portugal to withdraw its key economic support for Smith's administration, and led to Mozambique's independence the following year as a communist state openly allied with ZANU.

[16][n 3] In March 1978, Smith and non-militant nationalist groups headed by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau agreed what became the "Internal Settlement".

[22] Smith again worked to bring Nkomo into the government, hoping this would lend it some credence domestically, prompt diplomatic recognition overseas, and help the security forces defeat ZANLA.

The weapon that made such attacks feasible for ZIPRA was the Strela-2 shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile launcher, supplied by the Soviet Union from the mid-1970s as part of the Warsaw Pact's materiel support.

[24] Air Rhodesia was the country's national airline, established by the government on 1 September 1967 to succeed Central African Airways, which was dissolved at the end of that year.

[27] Despite the occasional rocket and mortar attacks launched on Kariba by ZIPRA guerrillas on the northern side of the Zambezi (in Zambia), the resort had endured as one of Rhodesia's choice tourist destinations.

After briefly settling the others, one of the passengers, Cecil MacLaren, led four others—young newlyweds Robert and Shannon Hargreaves, Sharon Coles, and her four-year-old daughter Tracey—off in the direction of a nearby village in search of water.

[29] Three of the 13 survivors remaining at the crash site hid on seeing figures approaching: Rhodesian Army reservist Anthony Hill, 39, took cover in the surrounding bush, while businessman Hans Hansen and his wife Diana did the same.

[31] Nkomo claimed responsibility for the attack in an interview with the BBC's Today radio programme the next day, laughing as he did so,[33] to the horror of most Rhodesian observers,[6][28] both black and white.

[37] According to Eliakim Sibanda, a professor and human rights speaker who wrote a history of ZAPU, Nkomo was implying that responsibility for the massacre lay with security force pseudo-guerrillas, more specifically the Selous Scouts unit, which had often been accused of brutalising rural civilians with the goal of shifting public opinion.

Sibanda asserts that the massacre "cannot be put beyond" the Scouts, and also supports Nkomo's claim that the Hunyani had been used militarily, suggesting that ZIPRA might have believed there to be Rhodesian soldiers on board.

[35] A report published in the American magazine Time a fortnight later described the incident as "a genuine horror story, calculated to make the most alarming of Rhodesian doomsday prophecies seem true.

[26] Describing the Herald newsroom the night of the incident, he relates a "vile collective temper" among the white sub-editors: "They cursed until their voices became hoarse, threatening dire consequences for all "terrs" and "munts" or "kaffirs"...

[28] Smith says that several would-be vigilante groups sought his permission to venture into the bush around the crash site to "make the local people pay for their crime of harbouring and assisting the terrorists".

He declared Rhodesia's intent to "liquidate the internal workings of those organisations associated with terrorism", and warned neighbouring countries to prepare for "any defensive strikes we might undertake" against guerrilla bases in their respective territories.

The Rhodesian military had struck these bases extensively in November 1977 during Operation Dingo, destroying much of the ZANLA presence there, but the insurgents had since built a complex called "New Chimoio", slightly to the east; the new camps were distributed across a far larger area than the originals.

Operation Gatling's primary target, just 16 kilometres (10 miles) north-east of central Lusaka, was the formerly white-owned Westlands Farm, which had been transformed into ZIPRA's main headquarters and training base under the name "Freedom Camp".

[41] The Rhodesian operation's other targets were Chikumbi, 19 kilometres (12 miles) north of Lusaka, and Mkushi Camp; all three were to be attacked more or less simultaneously in a coordinated sweep across Zambia.

[42] Using Rufunsa airstrip in eastern Zambia as a forward base, the Rhodesian military suffered only minor casualties during the three-day operation, and afterwards claimed to have killed over 1,500 ZIPRA personnel, as well as some Cuban instructors.

[30] In the elections held the following year under the Internal Settlement terms, boycotted by ZANU and ZAPU, Muzorewa won a majority, and became the first Prime Minister of the reconstituted, majority-ruled state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia on 1 June 1979.

[43] This new order failed to win international acceptance, however, and in December 1979 the Lancaster House Agreement was agreed in London by Zimbabwe Rhodesia, the UK government and the Patriotic Front, returning the country to its former colonial status.

In response to a 2013 British parliamentary motion proposing to condemn the shootdowns, its largest newspaper quoted only critical voices, and cited also the mass killings—allegedly of defenceless refugees—at guerilla camps.

[46] For its part, ZIPRA characterized its downing of civilian planes as a legitimate act of war on the grounds that the guerrillas might have believed them to have military personnel or equipment on board.

Christopher Mutsvangwa, a diplomat and political analyst, took a similar line, calling Hoey's proposed commemoration "a provocation ... [that] means they only regard the death of white people alone during the struggle.