Biafra's military veterans: no regrets, 50 years on The rebel province of Biafra, in southeast Nigeria, declared independence on May 30, 1967, triggering a bitter civil war that would leave more than one million dead, most of them from famine and disease. Fifty years on, a handful of civil war veterans still meet in the shade of a mango tree to sing the anthem of what was once their country: "The Land of the Rising Sun." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES