[NYTr] Congo: Mass graves found in troubled DRC region

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Riaz K. Tayob (activ-l)

AFP via Mail & Guardian Online (S.Africa) - Sep 13, 2007
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=319205


Mass graves found in troubled DRC region

by Sofia Bouderbala
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo	

Three mass graves have been uncovered in the eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) where a renegade general, government forces and
rebel groups have clashed for weeks, a United Nations mission said on
Thursday.

"We do not know the exact number of victims but there are several in 
each of the graves," Sylvie van den Wildenberg, a spokesperson from 
Monuc, told Agence France-Presse.

It would be impossible to give a figure until the freshly dug and badly 
covered site at Rubare, north-west of the Nord-Kivu regional capital 
Goma, had been excavated, she said.

The graves were found at a base that up until September 3 had been used 
by Bravo brigade, a force loyal to former general Laurent Nkunda, who 
now leads a rebel army in Nord-Kivu.

Van den Wildenberg would not say who notified the UN mission of the
find but said the information came after government troops moved in on 
September 6 to occupy the base.

"Monuc immediately informed the relevant Congolese judicial authorities 
to ask them to open an inquiry," she said, adding that the request had 
been received favourably.

When UN peacekeepers entered the towns of Kishero and Katwiguru on 
August 18 after they were abandoned by the same Bravo brigade, they 
discovered six half-buried corpses with bullet wounds.

News of the grave find came at a tense time for Nord-Kivu. Insurgent 
soldiers loyal to Nkunda tried to take the town of Sake, near Goma last 
week, leading Monuc to impose a ceasefire.

The UN said Thursday that more than 50 000 people had gathered at three 
camps near Goma after fleeing the assault.

Patrick Lavand'Homme from the UN Office for the Coordination of 
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that "10 860 families have been
counted around Mugunga".

Since Nkunda agreed the truce on September 6, his forces have
repeatedly clashed with rebels from the Democratic Liberation Forces of
Rwanda (FDLR) and local Mai-Mai militia.

He has established himself as a politico-military warlord in the rugged 
Nord-Kivu hills since the formal end in 2003 of a war that drew in the 
armies of several other African countries, including Uganda and Rwanda 
to the south.

Nkunda says he is protecting his own minority Tutsi population in Nord- 
and Sud-Kivu provinces from locally based mainly Rwandan Hutu FDLR 
rebels, which he has accused the Kinshasa government of backing.

Earlier this year troops loyal to Nkunda were drafted into joint 
brigades with regular government forces and deployed in Nord-Kivu 
following an accord signed by Kinshasa and the former general.

But mass defections ensued when the military command entrusted other 
brigades with the task of tracking down armed Rwandan Hutu rebels 
operating in DRC.

OCHA estimates that 305 000 people have been displaced in Nord-Kivu 
since December 2006. -- AFP