Occasional gunshots, groaning wounded and the shrieks of hungry children seeking safety in a besieged UN compound expressed the horror of Bunia yesterday.
Around 12 000 terrified civilians were huddling against the wire perimeters of the two UN barracks in the town in the eastern DRC, building makeshift camps under the machine guns of 700 Uruguayan peacekeepers.
Since at least 100 000 civilians having already fled, the town is practically deserted. There is no reliable estimate of the death toll from the intertribal conflict in the town but throughout yesterday bodies and mutilated wounded trickled into a makeshift clinic built against the wire.
The remains of 10 decapitated militiamen, their hands tied, arrived first. Two policemen were later found later, executed by the fighters of the Hema tribe who seized Bunia from the Lendu on Monday.
”Maybe we’ve seen a hundred bodies, maybe more. But most are still lying in their homes,” said Claude Idringi, head of nursing in the clinic.
Senior UN officials have warned that there may be a genocide in Bunia and elsewhere in Ituri province, but many analysts think the term inapplicable to the tit-for-tat killing spree which flourished under Uganda’s chaotic occupation of Ituri during the DRC’s five years of convoluted civil war.
On May 6 Uganda withdrew its troops from Bunia, and Lendu militiamen poured in. On Monday the Hemas took the town, reinforced by Ugandan artillery. Yesterday, Lendu fighters lurked in the suburbs, killing Hema civilians.
Ndjerayi Palos (80) lay in the clinic with her left arm neatly amputated by a Lendu bullet. ”I was the only one they didn’t kill,” she said. ”My four neighbours are all dead.”
Lokana Kabogambe (27) lay on the concrete beside her, trembling from shock, his head and arms swathed in bloodied bandages. Lendus came to his house on Thursday, murdered four of his rela tives, and left him for dead. ”They are animals,” he said.
With the main Hema militia, the Union of Congolese Patriots, tightening its grip on Bunia, UN officials warned of a counter-massacre of Lendus.
”Our big fear is that they start entering the camps at night and taking out Lendus,” said Michel Kassa, head of the UN coordination agency.
”We have no real idea how many are there.”
Meanwhile in New York negotiations continued at the UN on a French offer to send a military force, in response to a request by the secretary general, Kofi Annan, for action by security council members. Britain was also reported to be considering sending a small force.
The present Uruguayan UN peacekeepers, though praised for their efforts to protect fugitives, are ill-equipped to prevent the killing beyond their barracks.
”There are a lot of problems, but the main one is we just don’t understand the people,” said Sgt Edinson Carballo. ”I’d be very glad to go home.” – Guardian Unlimited Â