A Nepalese United Nations peacekeeper died overnight from injuries he sustained in an attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s troubled region of Ituri, the UN mission announced on Friday.
The soldier was among four peacekeepers wounded on Thursday in the attack on three helicopters that came under heavy fire as they were about to take off from Lugo, in the northeastern region of Ituri. His death brings to 18 the number of UN peacekeepers killed in the central African country since the UN mission was deployed there in 1999.
The three helicopters ”came under heavy fire as they were about to take off from Lugo [in the north of Ituri]” after an inquiry by the human rights section of the mission, known as Monuc, its spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Thierry Provendier said.
One helicopter, carrying civilian personnel from the human rights section, was hit but managed to take off, he said.
The other two helicopters, transporting a total of 36 Nepalese troops providing protection, were unable to take off, and four of the soldiers were wounded.
”Monuc sent a Mi-25 attack helicopter as a reinforcement which returned fire and enabled the evacuation of the wounded and the departure of the other two helicopters,” he said.
”The Mi-25 fired 60 rockets” in the direction of the attackers, he said, while indicating he had no news for the instant of possible casualties among the militiamen carrying out the attack.
”Everyone was evacuated by 1500 GMT”, he said, adding that the wounded had been transferred to the hospital at Bunia, capital of Ituri, about 50km south of Lugo.
The inquiry mission was made up of three members of the human rights section, a UN spokesperson, an assistant to the public prosecutor at Bunia and a police officer and had arrived at Lugo earlier that morning.
Its task was to ”check claims of rape and kidnapping of women by fighters of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI)”, an armed militia of the Lendu ethnic group, Provendier said.
The FNI was one of the six most active armed groups in Ituri until the end of April, when most of the militiamen operating in the area — an estimated 14 000 out of 15 000 — handed in their arms as part of a demobilisation and reinsertion programme.
Monuc said it did not know who carried out the attack. – Sapa-AFP