The United Nations Congo mission is investigating reports of a series of massacres of about 100 civilians and seven soldiers by Mayi-Mayi fighters in southeast Congo, a UN spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The killings allegedly were carried out since January at the town of Kitenge in Katanga province, 700km from the eastern city of Lubumbashi, spokesperson Hamadoun Toure said in Kinshasa, the Congo capital.
A UN Congo mission team set out for the remote area in mid-February to investigate, Toure said.
The UN mission and the Kinshasa-based government of Congo, a nation the size of Western Europe, are trying to assert control nationwide after a five-year war that split the country into rebel and government turf.
Ethnic militias are continuing attacks in Congo’s lawless east.
The Mayi-Mayi had been loosely allied with the government during the war.
Congo’s military confirmed the continuing massacres of civilians.
”For us, this is a group of armed bandits who continue to kill, to loot the people and rape the women,” said Congo General Dieugentil Mpia Nzambe. ”We cannot understand why the Mayi-Mayi continue to act this way.”
Attacks included an instance in which Mayi-Mayi fighters threw a grenade into a church, killing 25 people inside, Nzambe said.
On February 7, the fighters killed seven soldiers and one of the soldier’s wives during an attack on civilians, he said.
Earlier, in January, fighters took hostage a delegation of Congolese officers who had gone to negotiate the group’s disbanding, Nzambe said. Authorities paid a ransom for the officers’ release, he said.
Mayi-Mayi attacks have sent at least 15 000 civilians fleeing the region, Congolese human rights officials said. — Sapa-AP