Several United Nations peacekeepers were killed on Friday when unidentified gunmen attacked their patrol in the northeast region of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN mission in the country said.
A spokesperson for the Monuc mission said details of the attack are sketchy but that according to military sources within the UN operation it occurred in the late morning.
”Several [peacekeepers] patrolling in Ituri district were attacked by as-yet-unidentified armed elements,” the spokesperson, Mamadou Bah, said, adding that the Monuc military sources said members of the patrol were killed.
”We are not yet able to specify for the moment the number or nationality of the victims,” he said, adding that additional information will be provided later in the day.
Monuc officials confirmed that the ”losses” suffered include several dead and wounded.
The attack came amid Monuc stabilisation operations in Ituri, where the peacekeepers have since December been dismantling militia camps run by a range of groups that have been terrorising villagers living in the region.
On Thursday, the mission arrested 30 people, including 27 suspected of being members of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), one of six militant groups operating in Ituri, in the northern town of Datule.
The arrests were made after residents of the area identified the town as an FNI stronghold.
Since the end of last year, there has been a surge of violence in Ituri where the militias have gone on a spree of looting, rape and murder against civilians, driving more than 70 000 people from their homes.
The displaced have generally been resettled at sites protected by the peacekeepers and received, until mid-January, emergency humanitarian assistance from Unicef and the World Food Programme.
The UN has been targeted for attack in Ituri in the past. Two Monuc military observers were killed there in May 2003 and another in February of last year. — Sapa-AFP