An inquiry organised by a key rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has shown that 41 people were killed in violence in the rebel-controlled city of Kisangani last month, rebel sources said on Thursday.
A representative for the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) said the ”preliminary report by the investigative commission” showed that four Rwandans were lynched, four policemen or soldiers who sympathised with the rebels were killed, three of them by a lynch mob; and an armed civilian was killed when the RCD stepped in to put down an ”attempted mutiny” on May 14 in rebel-controlled Kisangani.
Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga added that the report indicated that ”17 civilians were killed by stray bullets and 11 mutineers drowned while trying to flee by canoe.”
Four bodies had yet to be identified, he added.
The Rwandan-backed RCD initially blamed a mutinous splinter group for the attacks on Kinsangani, but later accused President Joseph Kabila’s government and the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) of launching a bid to take over the DRC’s third largest city.
That met with a counter-accusation from Kinshasa, saying troops from Rwanda, which backs the RCD, had executed 20 people after the attempted overthrow.
The RCD and Kigali denied the charges, insisting there were no Rwandan soldiers in Kisangani. The exact number of dead during the foiled overthrow and its aftermath still remains unknown, with independent sources saying 10 may have been killed while the country’s Roman Catholic Church says as many as 200 perished in the attack.
According to testimony gathered from witnesses following the attack, RCD rebels killed some 30 people as the searched for the leaders of the mutiny.
One witness said the rebels carried out summary executions of police and soldiers in the two days following the attack. Several mutilated bodies were fished out of the city’s Tchopo River the next day.
”The bodies taken from the Tchopo River were those of mutineers that tried to flee by canoe and drowned,” Kisanga said.
He said the rebel group had turned the results of their inquiry over to United Nations human rights official Asma Jahangir, who is to further look into the incident.
Jahangir arrived in Kinsangani on Wednesday for a two-day visit after holding talks with the RCD in their stronghold, Goma.
Last month, the RCD refused to sign on to a power-sharing agreement reached between the government and the MLC after marathon peace talks in Sun City, South Africa.
Under the accord, Kabila was to remain head of state and the armed forces, with MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba becoming prime minister, a new post.
The RCD was offered lesser posts, which it refused, raising fears that the four-year-old war in the DRC would flare up again. – Sapa-AFP