UN: DRC attacks 'war crimes'
2007-11-15 09:56
Kinshasa - The United Nations mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (Monuc) on Wednesday condemned attacks near camps of displaced people in the east, warning that strikes on civilians were considered war crimes.
More than 28 000 displaced villagers fled their desolate camps in Nord-Kivu province on Tuesday after soldiers loyal to renegade ex-general Laurent Nkunda attacked army positions nearby, triggering clashes, said the Congolese army.
Military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Chareyron said: "Monuc condemns without reservations this attack, which aims to take the populations hostage and destabilise Nord-Kivu.
"Attacking or threatening civilian populations, especially those seeking refuge in humanitarian camps, constitute war crimes." Meanwhile, Congolese military officials said the Nord-Kivu region was calm on Wednesday.
Major Joesph Omari, commander of a battalion of the Congolese army (FARDC) in Mugunga, a region where five camps for the displaced population were located, said: "We have pushed back the enemy since Tuesday.
"The displaced people are beginning to return to the camps, cautiously."
'My children will suffer more'
Among the thousands who returned to the camps on Wednesday, many said they had slept in the bush or beside the road to the provincial capital, Goma.
Jimmy Baseme, 38, one of the returnees, said: "I fear that my children will suffer more because I have nothing to give them to eat tonight. But staying by the road with my children is not a solution."
Nord-Kivu province had been the site of confrontations between the Congolese army and insurgents backing Nkunda in recent months.
Nkunda denied being involved in the Mugunga attacks, blaming them on rebel Rwandan Hutus who had long lived on the DRC side of the border, the UN's radio Okapi reported.
Since the end of August, the regular army had deployed about 20 000 troops there to fight Nkunda's men or persuade them to surrender and demobilise with a chance to join a national military undergoing reforms after successive civil and rebel wars ended in 2003.
Villagers had been displaced by fighting not only between the army and Nkunda, who claimed to be protecting the minority Congolese Tutsi population, but also by clashes involving the Mai-Mai militia and Rwandan Hutu rebels hostile to Nkunda.