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Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 2:53 AM
Subject: UN troops push further into Congo after massacres


UN troops push further into Congo after massacres

By Dino Mahtani

KINSHASA, Oct 10 (Reuters) - U.N. peacekeepers have deployed to a remote town in northeastern Congo to try to shield civilians from further ethnic bloodshed after the latest in a series of massacres, a U.N. spokesman said on Friday.

A contingent of 120 troops was sent to the town of Bule on Thursday, some five km (three miles) from the hamlet of Katshelli where at least 65 people, among them 40 children, were shot and hacked to death on Monday.

"The mission is to secure the town of Bule and to prepare the ground for a larger, permanent deployment," U.N. spokesman Leocadio Salmeron told Reuters by telephone from Bunia, the main town in the northeastern Ituri region.

It is the first time U.N. troops have deployed outside Bunia -- where they recently took over from a French-led force under a mandate alllowing them to open fire to stop attacks on civilians.

The U.N. mission in Congo plans further deployment of troops beyond beyond Bunia next week.

Clashes between militias allied to the Hema and Lendu tribes for control of mineral-rich Ituri region have left more than 50,000 people dead and forced half a million more to flee their homes since 1999.

The latest killings took place in a predominately Hema village. Hema militia leaders have accused Lendus of orchestrating the attack. Lendu officials say they don't know who is to blame.

Representatives of armed militia groups met in Bunia on Monday to discuss disarming their soldiers, a process that would run parallel to the U.N. deployment in the region.

"We have given them 10 days to provide information about the location and strength of their forces, so we can get them to regroup and disarm," Colonel Laurent Banal, the U.N. commander for the Ituri province, said on Friday.

The violence in the northeast has complicated efforts to end Congo's wider war, in which more than three million people have died since 1998, mostly through disease and starvation.


   
10/10/03 07:44 ET
    

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