U.N. cuts back Congo army support after killings

Mon, Nov 2 06:37 PM

The United Nations will suspend support for Congolese army units that it believes deliberately killed over 60 civilians in joint operations this year, U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said in an interview aired Monday.

The United Nations has backed President Joseph Kabila's forces in operations against Rwandan rebels, despite complaints from human rights groups and others about abuses by soldiers and the high number of civilians caught up in the offensives.

"According to our information, these civilians were clearly targeted in attacks by certain units of the (army)," Le Roy told U.N.-sponsored Radio Okapi. He was referring to the deaths of at least 62 civilians between May and September in eastern Congo, where army units are fighting Rwandan rebels.

"We have decided that (Democratic Republic of Congo's peacekeeping mission) MONUC will immediately suspend its logistical and operational support to the army units implicated in these killings," Le Roy said during a tour of the region.

The killings cited by Le Roy took place around the village of Lukweti, around 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. Le Roy said many of the victims were women and children.

Congo launched operations against the rebel FDLR, some of whose members participated in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in January as part of efforts to heal ties with Rwanda, a former enemy during the country's 1998-2003 war.

More than 1,000 civilians have been killed, more than 7,000 women and girls raped, and more than 900,000 people forced to flee their homes since operations began. Over 1,000 of the FDLR's estimated 6,000 fighters have been disarmed.

Le Roy named the units as being part of the 213th brigade of the Congolese army. But he did not say how many were affected by the move or how it affected UN support of the wider operations.

EX-REBELS

"We know that support for some units of the 213th will definitely be suspended. We're investigating to see if other elements from other brigades were involved," Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg, MONUC's spokesperson in North Kivu, said.

The brigade is controlled by one of nearly two-dozen rebel groups brought into the army under a January peace deal aimed at bolstering its ability to take on the rebel Democratic Forces of the Liberation of Rwanda, a U.N. source said.

"We are surprised that the United Nations has announced sanctions against these units even before the conclusion of their investigation," Congo's Information Minister Lambert Mende said, adding that the move could destabilise the army.

Up to 50,000 Congolese soldiers, of which many are newly integrated former rebels and militia fighters, are deployed in operations in the border region of North and South Kivu. MONUC has concentrated around 95 percent of its 18,600-strong peacekeeping force in the Kivus to back the army offensive.

Villagers in the east were initially targeted by the FDLR in reprisals as the army moved against their positions earlier this year. But the army itself has been increasingly implicated in killings of civilians in recent months.

Last month Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, announced that army units massacred at least 50 Rwandan civilian refugees in the South Kivu village of Shalio and gang-raped dozens of women in an April attack. (Reporting by Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark John/David Stamp)

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