UN Murders In Congo?

[Annie]

Why not?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...050413/ap_on_re_af/congo_peacekeepers_assault

U.N. Peacekeepers Accused in Congo Deaths

13 minutes ago World - AP Africa


By BRYAN MEALER, Associated Press Writer

KINSHASA, Congo - Human rights activists charged Tuesday that U.N. peacekeepers knowingly gunned down civilians in a raid that targeted a marketplace, pinning down dozens of people down during the biggest gunbattle in the U.N.'s six-year mission in Congo.



The human rights group Justice Plus listed names of several alleged civilian victims from a March 1 raid in eastern Congo and said they "paid with their life, while the mandate of the United Nations was to protect them."


The United Nations said its troops fired only when they were attacked, and that women and children were among those who fired weapons.


The charges Tuesday came as U.N. peacekeepers announced they were staging an assault on a militia camp, targeting fighters in eastern Congo who have killed thousands in a years-old ethnic conflict. But the militia fled the camp before the troops arrived, spokesman Mohammad Abdul-Wahab said by telephone from Bunia, capital of the violent Ituri province and some 25 miles from the targeted camp.


He said the 300 peacekeepers sent to attack the camp instead spent the day dismantling it.


Accused of years of ineffectiveness, peacekeepers now are aggressively seeking to disarm fighters after thousands defied an April 1 ultimatum to surrender weapons. Some 9,000 of an estimated 15,000 fighters gave up their weapons.


U.N forces have raided three militia camps in the past month and killed up to 75 fighters.


Justice Plus charged that peacekeepers intentionally chose a busy market day to stage a March 1 assault, ensuring civilians were caught in hours-long crossfire between heavily armed militia and several hundred peacekeepers, the Bunia-based rights group said.


The raid killed up to 60 fighters, the United Nations has said.


Justice Plus said "the testimonies collected on the spot mention at least 60 persons killed, including several civilians, and many were injured."


It also charged that the raid near Loga, 20 miles north of Bunia, was in retaliation for a militia attack a week earlier in which nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers were slaughtered and their bodies mutilated.


The United Nations said the raid was not planned in revenge.[...]

 

[waltky]

Congolese Halloween horror story...

Congo crowd kills man, eats him after militant massacres: witnesses
Fri Oct 31, 2014 - A crowd stoned to death a young man in northeast Congo on Friday before burning and eating his corpse, witnesses said, in apparent revenge for a series of attacks by Ugandan rebels.

The incident in the town of Beni followed a number of overnight raids in the area blamed on the Islamist group ADF-NAUL, who are thought to have massacred more than 100 people this month, using hatchets and machetes to kill their victims. Witnesses said the man, who has not been identified, aroused suspicion on a bus when passengers discovered he could not speak the local Swahili language and that he was carrying a machete. Speaking from the town of Beni, Congo's President Joseph Kabila said the ADF-NALU militants would face the same fate as the rebel movement M23, which was defeated by a U.N.-backed government offensive last year. "There is no question of negotiation with the terrorists," Kabila said in a speech at a local hotel. "They will be defeated as was the case with the M23. And it will be very soon."

ADF-NALU is an alliance of groups opposed to the Ugandan government that has operated from bases in neighboring Congo since the mid-2000s, undermining Kinshasa's grip on the area. The movement was blamed for the deaths of 14 people, killed early on Thursday in the village of Kampi ya Chui, bringing the total death toll this month to at least 107, said Teddy Kataliko, president of the Civil Society of Beni. Tensions ran high in the town on Friday morning with around 100 demonstrators blocking the road from the airport into town, throwing stones and waving machetes to demand greater government protection against the rebels. Local government officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Earlier in the week, the government sought to downplay the threat posed by the group, which it had previously said was defeated in an operation earlier this year.

Estimates of its strength vary greatly, but the website of the U.N.'s peacekeeping mission in Congo estimates it has around 500 fighters. The Ugandan government has said ADF-NALU is allied with Somalia's al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab movement, but analysts say the nature of these ties is not clear, despite the ADF-NALU's clear Islamist ideology. In his speech on Friday, Kabila appealed for public support for a ramping up of its offensive against the group, but did not specify what that would entail. "I call on the population to support the army because the victory against the M23 was because the population was behind the army," he said. "I call on young people to join the army in great numbers."

Kabila also defended the U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MONUSCO following criticism from locals that it had failed to defend them and had even collaborated with ADF-NALU. Crowds of mainly young men attacked several peacekeeping facilities with stones and bows and arrows last week, forcing the evacuation of some staff. The U.N. mission says it has stepped up patrols in the area in the wake of the massacres.

Congo crowd kills man eats him after militant massacres witnesses Reuters

 

[Valerie]

yikes!

 

[waltky]

UN troops ambushed in The Congo...

Rebels kill 14 peacekeepers in Congo in worst attack on U.N. in recent history
December 8, 2017 - Rebels killed at least 14 U.N. peacekeepers and wounded 53 others in Congo and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday the attack that targeted troops from Tanzania was the worst in recent history.

Guterres said the raid in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo constituted a war crime and he called on Congolese authorities to investigate and “swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice”. “I want to express my outrage and utter heartbreak at last night’s attack,” Guterres told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. Three other peacekeepers are missing after a three-hour firefight that broke out at dusk on Thursday evening, said Ian Sinclair, the director of the U.N. Operations and Crisis Centre. Suspected militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) staged the assault on a base for Congo’s U.N. mission (MONUSCO) in the town of Semuliki, the mission said.

The ADF is an Islamist rebel group from across the border in Uganda, who has been active in the area. MONUSCO said it was coordinating a joint response with the Congolese army and evacuating wounded from the base in North Kivu’s Beni territory. Five Congolese soldiers were also killed in the raid, MONUSCO said in a statement. Rival militia groups control parts of mineral-rich eastern Congo nearly a decade and a half after the official end of a 1998-2003 war that killed millions of people, most of whom died from hunger and disease. The area has been the scene of repeated massacres and at least 26 people died in an ambush in October.

The government and U.N. mission have blamed almost all the violence on the ADF but U.N. experts and independent analysts say other militia and elements of Congo’s army have also been involved. Increased militia activity in the east and center of the country and a series of prison breaks have fueled mounting insecurity in Congo this year amid political tensions linked to President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down when his mandate expired last December. An election to replace Kabila, who has ruled Congo since his father’s assassination in 2001, has been repeatedly delayed and is now scheduled for December 2018.

Established in 2010, MONUSCO is the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping mission and had recorded 93 fatalities of military, police and civilian personnel. The death toll for the attack varied. A spokesman for Congo’s army, Mak Hazukay, said only one Congolese soldier was missing after the fighting and one had been injured, adding that 72 militants had been killed. Guterres said most of the peacekeepers were from Tanzania. Tanzania’s defense minister declined to comment.

Rebels kill 14 peacekeepers in Congo in worst attack on U.N. in recent

 

[Meathead]

TIA

This is Africa