Sixteen die in DRC massacre
2003-10-11 10:30
Nairobi - United Nations officials are investigating yet another massacre in eastern Congo in which 16 villagers were killed by troops believed to be from Burundi, a UN statement said late on Friday.
Witnesses said about 20 men speaking Kirundi - the language of Burundi - attacked the village of Ndunda, 30km north of Uvira along Congo's eastern border, according to a statement by Monuc (United Nations Organisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).
"According to witnesses, the victims, most of them women, were massacred with axes, machetes, clubs, daggers and other knives," said the statement, issued from Monuc's headquarters in the capital Kinshasa.
Monuc said four villagers were missing and two survivors of the attack were recovering in hospital in Uvira.
News of the attack comes in the same week that Monuc troops found the bodies of 65 people, including 40 children, massacred in the village of Katshele in the northeastern province of Ituri.
"Monuc strongly condemns this odious act and again emphasises the determination of the international community to put an end to impunity in the Democratic Republic of Congo," the statement said.
The attack occurred last Monday, but Monuc only issued the statement late on Friday.
Two Burundian rebel groups - the Forces of National Liberation and the Forces for the Defence of Democracy - have been operating in eastern Congo in their war against the Burundian army. The latter group pledged an immediate end to hostilities on Wednesday in peace talks with the government, mediated by South Africa.
The UN force asked the Burundian government to put in place a programme for repatriating Congo-based rebels. Some 100 are waiting in a Monuc camp for their return.
Eastern Congo has been the region worst-affected by nearly a decade of civil strife.
Ethnic Hutu extremists streamed across the border after carrying out the Rwanda genocide in 1994. The rebellion against dictator Mobutu Sese Seko began in the east in 1996, and Rwanda and Uganda then invaded the east in 1998 to try to topple the man they helped put in Mobutu's place, Laurent Kabila.
A shifting array of rebel groups, ethnic militia and bandits have terrorised civilians, leading to mass displacement and the deaths of more than 3 million people, according to an aid agency estimate.
The war is ostensibly over with the withdrawal of invading armies and the rebel groups joining a transitional government in June this year. However, parts of the east notably Ituri have remained unstable with repeated attacks by rival militia groups.
Monuc has some 8 50o peacekeeping troops at its disposal. - Sapa-DPA
- SAPA