Africa
Thousands flee DR Congo as battle rages in region
UN peacekeepers in an armoured personnel carrier patrol a key road linking Goma and Rutshuru in eastern Congo, in October last year. About 7,000 people fleeing ethnic violence in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have crossed the border into neighbouring Congo Republic in the past 24 hours, state radio said yesterday. Photo/REUTERS
Posted Thursday, November 5 2009 at 16:47
“What we are trying to do in the logistic support that we’ve given to the national army is instil this policy of zero tolerance in order to help minimize violent acts against the population,” Ross Mountain, the UN’s deputy mission chief in Congo, said Tuesday.
Mr Mountain said that MONUC and the Congolese government were trying to identify the units and areas where the killings were committed and which measures should be taken.
UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said Sunday that the U.N. would immediately cease support to the Congolese army’s 213th Brigade. Le Roy said the U.N. believed the unit had killed at least 62 civilians in the Lukweti area, some 50 miles (80 kilometres) northwest of the regional capital of Goma.
The Human Rights Watch report describes an August attack in the remote hamlet of Katanda in which it said soldiers decapitated four men and cut off their arms. They then raped 16 women and girls, including a 12-year-old girl, later killing four of them, the report said. Researchers also found that many of the more than 500 victims were women, children and the elderly. Some were hacked to death with machetes or clubbed to death, the report said.
Congo’s army is a ragtag, poorly paid collection of the defeated army of ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and several of the rebel groups that helped overthrow him. (Reuters)
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