The task force of about 370 paratroops entered Cassinga, which was known as Objective Moscow to the SADF, in the wake of an intense aerial bombardment. From this point onward, there are two differing accounts of the Cassinga incident. While both concur that an airborne South African unit entered Cassinga on 4 May and that the paratroopers destroyed a large camp complex, they diverge on the characteristics of the site and the casualties inflicted. The SWAPO and Cuban narrative presented Cassinga as a refugee camp, and the South African government's narrative presented Cassinga as a guerrilla base. The first account claimed that Cassinga was housing a large population of civilians who had fled the escalating violence in northern South West Africa and were merely dependent on PLAN for their sustenance and protection. According to this narrative, South African paratroopers opened fire on the refugees, mostly women and children; those not immediately killed were systematically rounded up into groups and bayoneted or shot. The alleged result was the massacre of at least 612 South West African civilians, almost all elderly men, women, and children. The SADF narrative concurred with a death toll of approximately 600 but claimed that most of the dead were insurgents killed defending a series of trenches around the camp. South African sources identified Cassinga as a PLAN installation on the basis of aerial reconnaissance photographs, which depicted a network of trenches as well as a military parade ground. Additionally, photographs of the parade ground taken by a Swedish reporter just prior to the raid depicted children and women in civilian clothing, but also uniformed PLAN guerrillas and large numbers of young men of military age. SWAPO maintained that it ordered the trenches around Cassinga dug to shelter the otherwise defenceless refugees in the event of an SADF raid, and only after camp staff had noted spotter planes overhead several weeks prior. It justified the construction of a parade ground as part of a programme to instill a sense of discipline and unity.