Rebel troops were poised outside the Congolese city of Goma yesterday as the EU mulled sending troops to the strife-torn region to prevent a humanitarian disaster.
Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, whose forces are threatening to grab the strategic eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) city, offered on Thursday to open humanitarian corridors for tens of thousands of civilians displaced by combat.
Only 850 UN peacekeepers stand between Goma and Nkunda’s forces, who have said they will not shirk a fight for the city if necessary, after government troops fled as the rebels closed in on the city on Wednesday.
Nkunda, who has declared a unilateral ceasefire, vowed in a letter to the UN mission in Kinshasa to allow “humanitarian organizations access to those in need who are behind our lines.”
UN forces commander Colonel Samba Tall said the ceasefire called by Nkunda on Wednesday was holding, and said his MONUC force was respecting its mandate, under which it could engage the rebels if necessary to protect civilians.
But Nkunda warned UN forces blocking the way to Goma that they would open fire if the UN tried to halt their advance.
“We cannot engage them, but if they shoot at us, they are soldiers; we will have to defend ourselves,” he said.
In Brussels, EU diplomats were scheduled to discuss yesterday whether to deploy troops to the region after aid agencies warned of a humanitarian catastrophe.
France has suggested the deployment of up to 1,500 soldiers who would provide technical and humanitarian support to the UN force.
Britain voiced caution, however.
The UK’s Africa minister Mark Malloch-Brown said he had spoken to the UN’s special representative on the crisis, Alan Doss, who had “renewed his request for troops.”
“I told him we first had to see how the political situation was going to shape up and whether or not this ceasefire would hold. Our first priority is a political process backed by adequate humanitarian process,” he said.
Nkunda said the European force would be useless but that he would not oppose it as long as its mission was to “support peace.”
In Goma, where shops, schools and offices were closed, witnesses said out-of-control remnants of the Congolese army, many of them drunk, had committed murder.
A reporter was shown the bodies of seven civilians, including two women. All were killed overnight by Congolese soldiers on a looting binge, landlord Joseph Ndakola said.
“Soldiers burst in here in the evening and stayed until four o’clock in the morning,” he said. “They looted all my tenants’ belongings, making them carry their things to their vehicles, and then they came back in to murder them.”
There were also reports from local residents that two women had been raped overnight on the outskirts of Goma in an area called Mosho.
Nkunda’s forces and the army resumed fighting in August, breaking a ceasefire agreement signed in Goma in January.
The Tutsi rebels say they are defending the inhabitants of Nord-Kivu Province against atrocities committed by Congolese forces and an allied Rwandan Hutu rebel group — the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
Aid agencies said at least 30,000 internal refugees were trapped between the rebels and UN forces blocking their access to Goma.
Around 8,000 people have crossed into Uganda, while about 1,200 people have entered Rwanda.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat
RSS