London | Saturday
ZIMBABWE has decreed that most of its soldiers killed in fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) be buried in the jungle rather than come home in body bags, according to an officer quoted in a British newspaper on Saturday.
“Top officers have instructed that a greater majority of those who die in combat should be buried in the DRC,” the unnamed captain told The Independent.
“I think the reason the army is burying its dead soldiers in the DRC is to control the damage and alarm that would greet the arrival of many dead bodies in Harare,” he added.
“Most of the families of the dead soldiers are still under the impression that their brave sons are on tour of duty,” he said, adding that 22 members of his battalion were buried in situ earlier this year, while other corpses were left to decompose.
Zimbabwe has committed 12 000 troops, a third of its total defence forces, to shore up DRC government troops during a three-year war against rebels.
Troops from Angola and Namibia are also supporting the government troops against the rebels and their Rwandan and Ugandan allies in a war which has left an estimated 2,5-million people dead.
The war has generated a number of lucrative business interests for Zimbabwe, notably in energy, mining, transport and communications.
Hope for peace in the DRC surged early on Saturday as the Kinshasa government and the rebels fighting it committed themselves to the unconditional withdrawal of all foreign armies from the country.
The resolution came at the close of week-long reconciliation talks at which the warring parties agreed to hold a long-overdue national peace dialogue in Addis Ababa on October 15. – AFP
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