Leaders pan DRC 'terror' attacks

2008-06-06 10:47

Kinshasa - Democratic Republic of Congo's top United Nations, United States and European Union officials condemned on Thursday "terrorist" attacks on refugees in the east of the country blamed on Rwandan Hutu militia, in which nine people were reported killed.

The victims of the attack on the Kinyandoni camp included two children, according to the UN refugee agency in Geneva, and scores were injured, it said.

The camp at Kinyandoni held more than 5 000 people who had fled the almost constant fighting in the region over the last few years.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special representative Alan Doss, and his EU and US counterparts in the region, Roeland van de Geer and Tim Shortley, said in a joint statement that Wednesday's attack counted as a war crime.

UN suspends operations

They deplored attempts to "thwart efforts deployed by Congolese authorities, helped by ... the international community", to restore state control in areas run by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The UN and other aid agencies were suspending operations in the area.

"We are shocked and alarmed by the fact that the displaced people, already victims of the fighting last year, were directly targeted. The attackers rampaged through the camp, killing and pillaging," said Marjon Kamara, head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Africa Bureau.

The camp's inhabitants had identified their attackers as members of the FDLR, said Dominique Bofondo, the regional administrator in Rutshuru, 70km north of the regional capital, Goma.

"These rebels have been harassing the population for months now, raping women and pillaging people's goods in the region," he said.

Main threats to peace

The FDLR comprised some 6 000 Rwandan Hutus who fled into DRC after the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis by Hutus in 1994. They were seen as one of the main threats to peace in the country's restive eastern region.

Diplomatic and military pressure to disarm and disband the rebels had mounted recently under the 2007 Nairobi process, which was launched by the DRC and Rwanda with EU, US and UN backing.

The international officials noted that such attacks usually happened "each time pressure mounts to put an end to their presence and their illegal activities on Congolese soil".

However, the FDLR denied responsibility in a statement signed by its leader Callixte Mbarushimana, dated from Paris and sent to AFP in Nairobi.

It condemned the attack and called for the UN to set up an inquiry to "determine the identity of these ignoble crimes and bring them to justice".

The group accused the UN mission in the DRC of "pointing the finger at the FDLR every time exactions are committed in the Kivu region without making any sort of investigation."

The UNHCR said two workers from the non-governmental group Saving Lives through Alternative Options (SLAO) were among those wounded.

- AFP