- Hunting down the Congolese militia that killed nine UN peacekeepers last week, the international troops today killed at least 50 militia fighters, a UN spokesman said today. The UN claims that the attack was not a retaliation raid but that the peacekeepers only were returning fire from the Congolese militiamen.
About 240 peacekeepers from Pakistan, Nepal and South Africa in the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo Kinshasa (MONUC) were travelling near the village of Loga in Ituri district "when they were fired upon," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a press briefing in New York today. Air support had thus being provided by Indian troops.
The shootout ended in the killing of "at least 50 militia fighters," the UN informs. There was no mention of killed UN peacekeepers, although two MONUC soldiers were wounded. According to the information given by Mr Dujarric, the MONUC unit had been "carrying out a search and cordon operation," and was not on a retaliation mission.
MONUC had "a right to protect itself when shot at," the spokesman added, noting that the operation was part of the mission's more robust approach to normalise the situation and to protect the civilian population. According to MONUC's 'Radio Okapi', mission spokesman, Lt Col Dominique Demange, said about 30 light weapons were seized by the MONUC unit.
Two militia camps, one of which was believed to be the battalion headquarters of the Nationalist Integrationist Front (FNI), were destroyed in the operation designed to protect the civilian population from militias "who had been terrorising the civilian population," Mr Dujarric said.
MONUC has said various militias have been looting and extorting the local population. FNI is a militia dominated by the Lendu ethnic group, which has been battling against members of the Hema ethnic group seizing their land.
Unconfirmed reports blame the FNI militia for last Friday's ambush of a MONUC unit, which killed nine Bangladeshi soldiers. The attack took place outside the village of Kafé in north-eastern Congo's troubled Ituri province. FNI militiamen recently had raided several Hema villages close to Kafé and rejected demands by MONUC and the Kinshasa government to disarm.
The UN Security Council today condemned the Friday attack on MONUC, saying it considered "this aggression, by its intentional and well-planned nature, to be an unacceptable outrage." A statement by the Council blamed the FMI and its leaders for the deadly attack on MONUC. It mentions the names of several FMI leaders and other Ituri militia leaders that still defy disarmament orders.
The Security Council further expressed concern that integrating officers of the Ituri militias into the national Congolese Armed Forces had failed to lead to the disarmament and demobilising of militiamen. It called on donors to fund the integration of militias into national troops and police and on the Kinshasa government to deploy these integrated troops in Ituri.
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