At least 60 people, mostly women and children, were killed in a massacre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the weekend, Ugandan army spokesperson Major Shaban Bantariza said on Monday.
”We know of 60 people and they may be more who were killed in the ambush,” Bantariza said, saying that those killed were shot in a single attack on Saturday.
”They were massacred by suspected Lendu militias who ambushed them as they walked towards our border near the River Semliki, in the last areas of eastern Ituri region before you enter Uganda,” he added.
Ituri has long been the theatre of hostilities between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups.
Death counts in these clashes have soared since a large scale war broke out in DRC in 1998, leading to a massive influx of firearms.
Uganda, currently in the process of pulling out some 6 000 troops from Ituri, has warned that its withdrawal could lead to a ”security vacuum”.
”I hope that the UN peacekeepers are deployed to that region immediately to stop the menace, because our troops in that area have been withdrawn and we have nothing we can do,” Bantariza said.
Troops from Monuc, the UN’s force in DRC, are gradually deploying in Ituri and Kinshasa sent 130 armed policemen to Bunia last week.
Kampala started withdrawing its forces last year after an agreement aimed at ending the conflict in the vast central African country.
The motive of the attack was not known, but Bantariza said that the Lendus have been killing their Hema rivals as they fled the volatile Ituri region for either Uganda or areas far away from Bunia, the epicentre of the clashes.
Sources in Bundibugyo, on the Ugandan side of the border, said that dozens of Congolese arrive from Ituri every day, saying they feared for their lives at home.
”I am in great fear that the situation will even become worse if the Ugandan military just withdraws without another force replacing them,” Roman Catholic priest Joe Deneckera said in Bunia last week.
He was escorting a fellow Belgian priest who had been shot in the legs. – Sapa-AFP