Rival ethnic groups renewed battle with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars in the streets of Bunia in the DRC, as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan struggled to muster a major international force to quell the bloodletting.
Latest fighting had more than 10 000 people in the embattled city of Bunia taking shelter under UN protection at the city’s airport and a UN compound, a UN representative, Patricia Tome, said by telephone from the scene.
At the United Nations, the chief UN war crimes prosecutor warned that fighting in the region could lead to a ”genocide.”
”Our evaluation of what we know — it could be a genocide, it could be a genocide,” said Carla Del Ponte, who is in charge of prosecuting perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda and those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia.
At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II declared himself ”profoundly disturbed” by the killing of at least two priests and others taking shelter at a Catholic church in the city.
A Vatican news service, Fides, said fighters had killed 48 others at the Catholic Nyakasanza parish over the weekend. It urged the world ”to wake up to what is happening here in the Ituri region, because we risk a tragedy like the one in Rwanda in 1994.”
Officials traveling with Del Ponte, who was in New York to meet Annan and Security Council members, said that on the basis of information made public about what was happening in Ituri, the legal requirements for genocide could possibly be met.
The 1948 genocide convention requires all signatories to try to prevent genocide, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hostilities in lawless eastern Ituri province further endanger a December 2002 deal meant to piece Africa’s third-largest country back together after five years of war and occupation by foreign African armies. The war has killed three million, most civilians, by relief groups’ count.
The latest violence in Ituri broke out May 7 after neighbouring Uganda pulled out the last of its more than 6 000 soldiers in and around Bunia, leaving what Uganda warned would be a security vacuum.
Ugandan withdrawal left the town in the hands of local Lendu tribal fighters, a 625-member UN contingent made up mostly of troops from Uruguay, and an even smaller Congolese police force.
The contingent proved no match for an estimated 25 000 to 28 000 tribal fighters in Ituri, including thousands massed in the area of Bunia.
Clashes for control of the town immediately broke out between warriors of the Lendu and the rival Hema ethnic group.
Lendu fighters used mortars, artillery and small arms on Tuesday to attack Bunia, which they had lost to the rebel Union of Congolese Patriots in fighting on Monday. The UPC is made up of fighters from the Hema minority.
Hema and Lendu communities have battled repeatedly and bloodily for turf in the eastern DRC, most recently, until this month, April 3 Lendu raids outside Bunia reported to have killed as many as 1 000.
On Tuesday, fighting neared 200 metres from the UN base in Bunia, said Tome, of the UN mission in the DRC. By the end of the day, more than 10 000 people had fled to two UN positions in the city, Tome said.
”As we speak, they’re using artillery, mortars. You can hear the exchanges of gunfire,” Tome said.
During a lull, civilians who ventured out identified the bodies of at least 112 slain civilians, said Christian Lukusha, representative of Justice Plus, an area human rights group.
France, seen as a potential leader of any international mission to the province, said it was considering a UN request to deploy a battalion, with about 700 troops, in the former Belgian colony.
At the United Nations, Annan said the world body had put out a request for troops to unspecified ”governments with capacity.”
”France has indicated that in principle it is prepared to participate in such a force, provided there is a clear mandate, and other governments join in. So we are in touch with other governments trying to see if they will join France in such an
effort,” Annan said.
Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram, the current council president, said ”there is no crystallisation of positions as yet” on what to do in the DRC.
Annan said he talked to the Ugandan government and South African President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday morning ”who’s also talking to the leaders in the region.”
”But we have asked the Ugandan government to cooperate and to use its influence in the region to ensure that the militia and the people in the region restrain themselves and do not escalate tensions in the region,” Annan said.
The DRC’s war broke out in August 1998 when Uganda and Rwanda sent troops to back rebels seeking to oust then-President Laurent Kabila, accusing him of arming insurgents threatening regional security. Most foreign troops have withdrawn under a series of peace deals. – Sapa-AP
Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this story from the United Nations.