Rebels and pro-government militiamen executed civilians this week in two waves of terror that the top UN envoy to Congo said Saturday amount to war crimes — highlighting the inability of undermanned UN peacekeepers to protect civilians.
Meanwhile, Congo’s army advanced toward rebel lines on Saturday, with renewed fighting near the provincial capital of Goma threatening a fragile ceasefire.
Fighting broke out on Friday near Kibati, about 10km north of Goma. By Saturday morning the army had moved at least 1km north into a no man’s land that had been unpatrolled since the rebels called a ceasefire 10 days ago after routing the army.
PHOTO: EPA
UN envoy Alan Doss said “war crimes that we cannot tolerate” were committed at Kiwanja, by rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s fighters and by Mai Mai militiamen supporting the government.
UN investigators on Friday visited 11 graves containing what villagers said were 26 bodies, said UN spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg. New York-based Human Rights Watch said the death toll could be higher.
“We are getting reports of more than 50 dead, but we are still in the process of confirming that information,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
UN peacekeepers have a well-established base in Kiwanja, about 80km north of Goma, but it has only 120 soldiers in the town of between 30,000 and 50,000.
They were pinned down under crossfire some of the first day of the killings on Tuesday and were hampered because militiamen were hiding in houses among civilians, military spokesman Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich said.
Peacekeepers also were trying to deter rebel attacks on two other nearby towns, Nyanzale and Kikuku, on Tuesday when the killings in Kiwanja continued, he said.
“It’s very difficult to protect thousands of civilians, especially at night,” Dietrich said.
Doss told a news conference, “Sadly we can’t protect every person in the Kivus [provinces].”
Regional leaders at an emergency Congo summit in Nairobi on Friday condemned the peacekeepers’ failure to protect civilians — the primary mandate of the 17,000-man force in Congo, a country the size of Western Europe where dozens of armed groups daily perpetrate gross human rights abuses.
A reporter in Kiwanja on Thursday saw bodies of two men on the main road, lying where they had been shot less than 1.5km from the UN camp.
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