UN Forces Kill 50 Congo Militiamen in Gunbattle

02/03/2005| IslamWeb

U.N. Pakistani peacekeepers killed at least 50 militiamen in a clash in northeastern Congo on Tuesday, a week after nine Bangladeshi U.N. troops were killed there, senior U.N. sources said on Wednesday.

 

The U.N. sources said the militia fighters opened fire on Pakistani peacekeepers hunting those responsible for attacks on civilians, wounding two of them and triggering a bout of heavy fighting involving helicopter gunships.

 

"The number of militia dead is now 50, maybe 60, but there may be more because they were engaged by helicopters as well," said a senior source in the U.N. peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

"This is sending a strong signal to these militias that we are serious," the source told Reuters in Kinshasa.

 

The clash happened at Loga, near where the Bangladeshi peacekeepers were killed in an ambush last Friday. Loga lies 19 miles outside Bunia, the main town in the Ituri region, one of the worst troublespots in the Congo.

 

"I can confirm 50 Congolese militiamen were killed," said Rachel Eklou, a U.N. spokeswoman in Bunia.

 

The clash was one of the biggest involving the U.N. force in Congo, where militiamen roam vast swathes of the lawless east of Africa's third-biggest country.

 

A U.N. military source said the dead were members of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) militia, whose leader has been arrested in connection with the peackeeper killings.

 

"At least 50 FNI were killed. This was a big operation, but there's more to come," the U.N. military source said.

 

The FNI is an ethnic Lendu-dominated militia which has been battling rival Hema factions in a conflict that has killed more than 50,000 people in northeastern Congo since 1999.

 

Fighting this year between the militia foes has forced 70,000 people to flee their homes. The United Nations has deployed nearly a third of its 16,000 peacekeepers in Ituri.

 

FNI leader Floribert Ndjabu was arrested in the capital, Kinshasa but has not been charged, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.

 

The slaying of the Bangladeshi soldiers was the worst single loss suffered by the United Nations' peace mission since it began in the former Zaire in 1999.

 

 

 

PHOTO CAPTION

 

A UN peacekeeper keeps watch in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. (AFP)