UN peacekeepers killed in DRC

2005-02-25 18:29

Kinshasa - Nine Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers were killed and as many as 11 wounded on Friday when their patrols were ambushed in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN mission in the country said.

The attack, one of bloodiest against a UN peacekeeping mission in recent years, occurred in the Ituri region of the DRC, which is a stronghold of several ethnic and political armed militias.

"At around 9:20 (07:20 GMT) this morning, two foot patrols of a Bangladeshi Monuc contingent were caught in an ambush five kilometres west of Kafe" in the Ituri region, Monuc mission spokesman Mamadou Bah said.

He said nine peacekeepers had been killed but that another four, initially reported as missing, had later been found "in good health."

In Washington, UN Undersecretary General Jean-Marie Guehenno, who is in charge of peacekeeping operations, said that in addition to nine dead, 11 had been injured and that all the casualties were from Bangladesh.

Details of the ambush were sketchy and it was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, but Bah said the attack took place in an area where the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), one of six militias, is active.

The security situation in the region has deteriorated in recent weeks despite Monuc operations in the region to dismantle militia camps run by a range of groups which have been terrorising villagers living in the region.

Peacekeepers began those missions in December and on Thursday, Monuc arrested 30 people, including 27 suspected of being FNI members in the northern town of Datule.

Since the end of last year, there had been a surge of violence in Ituri where the militias have gone on a spree of looting, rape and murder against civilians, driving more than 70 000 people from their homes.

The displaced have generally been resettled at sites protected by the peacekeepers and received, until mid-January, emergency humanitarian assistance from UNICEF and the World Food Programme.

The United Nations has been targeted for attack in Ituri in the past. Two Monuc military observers were killed there in May 2003 and another in February of last year.

Monuc is currently the largest UN peacekeeping operation in the world, with some 14 500 so-called "blue helmets" under its command.

It reinforced its presence in eastern DRC, in particular the Ituri region across the border from Uganda, where about 3 000 peacekeepers - from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Morocco - are now deployed.

- AFP