60 rebels in DR Congo put down their weapons
KINSHASA (AFP) — Sixty former rebels surrendered their weapons in the Democratic Republic of Congo's troubled northeast Ituri region, the United Nations said Thursday.
"Sixty ex-combatants from the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) arrived Thursday in Bunia," UN Observer Mission in DR Congo (Monuc) spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai told AFP.
The former rebels, according to Mounoubai, are waiting to be picked up by the Democratic Republic of Congo forces (FARDC), and they will probably be transferred to the soldier reintegration centre in the west of the country.
The 60 stepped up a few days after three former warlords from Ituri arrived in Kinshasa on November 2, as part of a peace deal with the government, signed before the elections in July 2006.
The former militia chiefs include Peter Karim from FNI, "Cobra" Matata Wanaloki from the Patriotic Resistance Forces in Ituri (FRPI) and Matthieu Ngujolo of the Congolese Revolutionary Movement.
"It is difficult to say exactly the number of militia who remain who need to be disarmed as they arrive voluntarily and in drips and drabs," Mounoubai said.
Since 2005, the national disarmament and reintegration process has processed 20,000 former militiamen.
Ituri has been the 1999 of violent skirmishes between militia as well as inter-ethnic violence that have between them killed more than 60,000, according to humanitarian agencies.
