The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo is investigating a March 1 operation in which peacekeeping soldiers killed about 60 militiamen who had ambushed and killed Bangladeshi troops, Monuc announced on Wednesday.
”The probe at Loga, which began on March 7 is a routine investigation of the kind we carry out after each operation for a military assessment of the results,” Monuc spokesperson Kemal Saiki told a press conference in Kinshasa.
On March 1, South African and Pakistani troops launched an operation at Loga in the volatile northeastern Ituri region of the DRC against militias of the Nationalist Integrationist Front (FNI), held responsible for brutally killing nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers in the UN force on February 25.
UN officials, responsible for a force of more than 16 500 peacekeepers throughout the vast central African country that began to emerge from its last war in 1999-2003, said the toll from the operation at Loga was ”two wounded on Monuc’s side and about 60 militiamen [dead]”.
Local villagers have accused the international peacekeeping force of killing civilians too, but Monuc military spokesperson Lieutenant-Colonel Dominique Demange said the troops acted on the basis of ”precise intelligence” and chose a market day because that’s ”the day the militia gather to collect taxes”, as the armed gangs call extortion, from residents.
”Militiamen used civilians as human shields in the market but the Blue Helmets didn’t open fire at that time,” he added.
UN military sources have said that under the force’s UN Security Council-backed mandate in the region, troops are entitled to open fire on anybody armed who attacks them or threatens the peacekeepers.
Saiki, the Monuc communications director, also urged the DRC transitional government of President Joseph Kabila, which was set up in 2003 under a series of peace accords that also led to the disengagement of half a dozen foreign armies deployed in the country on one side or the other, to ”end its silence regarding atrocities committed in Ituri”.
The region has long been a hotbed of ethnic strife among half a dozen militias and the majority Lendu and minority Hema peoples who live in the area close to the Ugandan border.
It, has seen thousands of cases of murder, rape, extortion and harassment of civilians by the armed gangs, documented recently in reports by organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).
Saiki said the government should ”take seriously” a UN Security Council statement of March 2 which expressed support for tough action by peacekeepers and condemned ”illegal and criminal activities” by the militias.
On February 27, FNI leader Floribert Ndjabu was arrested in Kinshasa, while two of five other militia leaders who have been promised the rank of general in the new DRC army in exchange for the voluntary disarmament of their forces in Ituri were placed under house arrest.
Security has been tightened around such people in the capital, AFP journalists reported, but some of the militia leaders are still allowed to communicate with the outside world, including the media.
Monuc in September 2004 launched an operation to disarm about 15 000 militia forces in Ituri, but only 3 889 of them have so far been demobilised, according to the latest figures available on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Wednesday that the situation had become sufficiently safe again to ensure that more than ”88 000 recently displaced people are now receiving humanitarian assistance in Ituri following the resumption of aid activities in the camps this week”.
However, added a statement from Modibo Traore, OCHA spokesperson in Bunia, the chief town in Ituri, ”the situation remains very tense in the area and the risk that vital aid may once again be cut off is very real”.
”There are very likely more people still hiding in the bush” Traore said. ”We are receiving reports of people who are sick or injured but too afraid to seek treatment. Humanitarian [workers] can only help those who can reach the safe areas”. – Sapa-AFP