The African Union on Friday condemned the massacre of hundreds of people in northeastern Congo last week and said the violence was an attempt to derail the peace process intended to end the four-and-a-half year war in Africa’s third largest country.
Amara Essy, acting chairman of AU commission, said the April 3 dawn raids on more than a dozen villages in Congo’s restive Ituri province were ”horrendous events.”
The aim of the massacre was ”to undermine the peace process in… Congo and to jeopardise the dynamics of the peace process in the region of the Great Lakes as a whole,” Essy said in the statement.
A preliminary UN investigation into the attacks on the Roman Catholic parish of Drodro and 14 surrounding villages discovered more than 20 mass graves and found that 966 people were killed. It is not clear who carried out the attacks and UN military observers are still investigating the massacre, but witnesses said the attackers included men in uniform, as well as women and children in civilian clothes.
Residents in Drodro told reporters on Thursday that the assailants were Lendu militiamen who looted homes and stole cattle. The Lendu are allied to Ugandan forces, but Ugandan officials have denied that their troops were involved in the killing spree.
Ituri has been beset by fighting between rival tribes, rebel groups and Ugandan forces for months.
The attacks took place a day after the Congolese government, rebel groups, political parties and civic groups signed a power-sharing deal that is supposed to end the war in Congo.
The conflict broke out in August 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda sent troops to back rebels seeking to oust then-President Laurent Kabila, Joseph’s father. They accused him of backing insurgents threatening regional security.
Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia sent troops to back the government, splitting the country into rebel-and government-held areas.
Most foreign troops withdrew after a series of peace deals took hold, but fighting between rival rebel factions, tribal fighters and Ugandan troops has continued in eastern and northeastern Congo.
Uganda has more than 2 500 troops in Ituri. On Wednesday, a summit of five African leaders, including Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, reiterated that Uganda should withdraw its troops from Congo by April 24. – Sapa-AP