700 troops wait in Uganda
2003-06-09 11:20
Kampala - More than 700 French soldiers have arrived in Uganda over the past two days to take part in an EU peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a military spokesperson said on Monday.
One hundred soldiers will be flown in each day beginning on Tuesday to DRC's flashpoint town of Bunia, troop spokesperson Captain Frederic Solano said.
"The first 100 soldiers will be flown to Bunia on June 10 and another 100 will be flown there daily over the following days," Solano said.
Bunia is the main town in the northeastern Ituri region of the DRC, where ethnic violence has claimed more than 300 lives in recent weeks following withdrawal of Ugandan troops from the central African country.
Clashes between fighters of ethnic Lendu majority and minority Hemas, who have controlled the town since mid-May, erupted on Saturday, a day after an advance team of about a dozen French special forces and four British soldiers landed at Bunia airport.
Inter-ethnic violence in the Ituri region of northeast DRC has claimed about 50 000 lives and displaced an estimated 500 000 others since 1999.