KINSHASA (AFP) — The UN mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) Wednesday condemned attacks near camps of displaced people in the east, warning that strikes on civilians are considered war crimes.
More than 28,000 displaced villagers fled their desolate camps in Nord-Kivu province on Tuesday when soldiers loyal to renegade ex-general Laurent Nkunda attacked army positions nearby, triggering clashes, the Congolese army said.
"MONUC condemns without reservations this attack, which aims to take the populations hostage and destabilise Nord-Kivu," MONUC's military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Chareyron, told reporters in Kinshasa.
"Attacking or threatening civilian populations, especially those seeking refuge in humanitarian camps, constitute war crimes," he said, without naming those responsible for the attack.
Meanwhile, Congolese military officials said the Nord-Kivu region was calm Wednesday.
"We have pushed back the enemy since yesterday (Tuesday)," said Major Joseph Omari, commander of a battalion of the Congolese army (FARDC) in Mugunga, a region where five camps for the displaced population are located.
"The displaced people are beginning to return to the camps, cautiously."
Among the thousands who returned to the camps on Wednesday, many said they had slept in the bush or beside the road to the provincial capital Goma.
"I fear that my children will suffer more because I have nothing to give them to eat tonight. But staying by the road with my children is not a solution," said Jimmy Baseme, 38, one of the returnees.
Nord-Kivu province has been the site of confrontations between the Congolese army and insurgents backing Nkunda in recent months.
Nkunda denied being involved in the Mugunga attacks, blaming them on rebel Rwandan Hutus who have long lived on the DR Congo side of the border, the UN's radio Okapi reported.
Since the end of August, the regular army has deployed about 20,000 troops there to fight Nkunda's men or persuade them to surrender and demobilise with a chance to join a national military undergoing reforms after successive civil and rebel wars ended in 2003.
Villagers have been displaced by fighting not only between the army and Nkunda, who claims to be protecting the minority Congolese Tutsi population, but also by clashes involving the Mai-Mai militia and Rwandan Hutu rebels hostile to Nkunda.
Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Related articles
