|
Sat Mar 5, 7:57 AM ET |
|
By David Lewis
BUNIA, Congo (Reuters) - Women fighters were among the 50 people killed by U.N. troops during a battle with militia in northeastern Congo, a U.N. spokesman said on Saturday, responding to claims that women and children died in the clash.
The battle on Tuesday at a militia camp near the main town of Bunia in the lawless Ituri district was the deadliest involving U.N. troops deployed in Congo. It came five days after gunmen killed nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers in the same area.
"It seems there were women combatants and some of these were killed during the operation," said Kemal Saiki, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC.
He said the United Nations (news - web sites) was still investigating reports that about 25 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the clash.
Saiki said up to 500 militia fighters from the Lendu ethnic group were involved in the battle against U.N. forces hunting militiamen suspected of killing civiliajs.
U.N. officials have accused the militias of using villagers as human shields during Tuesday's fighting.
Ethnic warfare, mainly between Lendu and rival Hema factions, has killed 50,000 people in Ituri since 1999. The conflict is rooted in land and commercial rivalries, in a region rich in gold, diamonds and timber.
Major Zahid Khan Aamir, a U.N. officer who took part in Tuesday's operation in nearby Loga, declined to comment on whether women fighters had been killed, but said women regularly appeared in militia ranks.
He said fighters had continued to stream from all directions to attack U.N. troops leaving on helicopters that had been parked in a football field during the clashes.
"We gave plenty of time for these people to leave and only fired when fired upon," Aamir told reporters in Bunia.
"Even as we were withdrawing, the militias were surrounding the football field and they attacked," he said.
The Kinshasa government has come under intense pressure from the United Nations and foreign governments to hunt down those responsible for slaying the Bangladeshi soldiers.
A U.N. spokesman in New York said on Friday that the Congolese government had arrested several militia leaders, detaining them under house arrest, but regretted that they still seemed to be able to move about and communicate freely.
"The mission is calling on the government to truly arrest these people and bring them to justice," U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
Floribert Ndjabu, head of the Lendu-dominated Nationalist Integrationist Front (FNI), was arrested in Kinshasa while FNI force commander Goda Sukpa and Lendu ally Germain Katanga were under house arrest, government officials have said.
The fighting has threatened the Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites)'s efforts to move on from a wider war which ended in 2003, killing 4 million people, mainly through hunger and disease.
The U.N. Children's Fund said the renewed clashes had caused U.N. aid workers to quit much of the eastern Congo, cutting humanitarian aid to an estimated 54,000 displaced people.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
