Violence last week in the Bas Congo province in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) left 134 people dead, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
”We estimate at … 134 the number of lives lost in these clashes,” Didier Rancher, a military spokesperson for the UN mission said of the clashes between security services and members of the Bunda dia Kongo (BDK) religious movement.
”It is a real tragedy and we hope that light will be cast on these incidents,” Rancher added. He said 300 UN peacekeepers had been deployed in the area.
The official toll at the Central African country’s Interior Ministry is 87 dead, including 10 from the security services.
The clashes began last Wednesday and followed allegations by the BDK that the recent first-round election of Bas Congo’s governor — a candidate close to victorious presidential candidate Joseph Kabila — was rigged.
The Interior Ministry has acknowledged wanting to nip in the bud what it saw as an attempt to paralyse the province, home to the country’s biggest port.
Another spokesperson, Jean-Tobie Okala said a UN team had been sent to evaluate the security and humanitarian needs in the area, especially in hospitals where casualties of the clashes were being treated for bullet wounds.
UN human rights officials had also been sent to investigate the clashes.
The opposition Congo Liberation Movement (MLC) said on Saturday that it had filed official complaints about the result in Bas Congo as well as in the capital, Kinshasa.
Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former rebel turned vice-president who lost to Kabila in landmark presidential elections last year, called for the election in Kinshasa to be annulled and for a second round to take place in Bas Congo.
Candidates from Kabila’s political coalition, the Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP), won first-round victories in eight of the nine provincial assemblies choosing governors last month.
The results cemented the political dominance of Kabila, whose camp already dominated both houses of Parliament as well as seven out of the 11 provincial assemblies.
The elections marked the final stage in what it is hoped will be a definitive return to multiparty democracy after four decades of kleptocracy and war that left millions dead and the vast mineral-rich DRC in ruins. — Sapa-AFP