Maybe if these poor folks had some oil we'd have an interest in "liberating" them, too.
Maybe these "savages" are undeserving though, much like the Rwandans a few years ago, right Ronnie???
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
washingtonpost.com
UN Investigates Alleged Civilian Massacre in Congo
By Mark Dummett
KINSHASA (Reuters) - U.N. investigators went on Monday to a remote Congo town where local people say nearly 1,000 civilians were massacred in what may be the worst atrocity in the country's 4 1/2-year war.
Women and children joined in the bloody dawn raid on Drodro last Thursday, killing 966 people within three hours with guns and machetes, U.N. officials quoted eyewitnesses saying.
"Nearly 1,000 dead -- I cannot remember a time when so many were killed in such a short space of time," said Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the U.N. force in Congo (MONUC). Millions have died in Congo's war, mainly through hunger and disease.
U.N. officials who visited Drodro on Saturday reported seeing scraps of clothing and traces of blood above some of 20 mass graves they found. They returned on Monday with medical supplies for some of the 49 wounded survivors.
"We want to find out what happened, why it happened, who did that," Toure said.
Drodro's population is mainly from the Hema tribe, which has been pitted against the rival Lendu in an ethnic conflict that has blown up in recent months as the factions from the wider war in the Democratic Republic of Congo have become involved.
An officer from the Rwandan-backed Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), a Hema militia, vowed reprisal attacks against Lendu, but there was no word of new violence on Monday.
Ugandan forces in nearby Bunia said 700 to 800 extra troops had arrived from Uganda at the weekend to stop more killing in Drodro, and had taken control of a nearby airstrip.
Bunia is 50 miles from Uganda, one of half a dozen countries drawn into the complex war in mineral-rich Congo.
Uganda has traditionally been close to the Hema but its troops have clashed with the UPC, led by Thomas Lubanga and backed by Uganda's rival in the region, Rwanda.
The U.N. force in Congo (MONUC) has established a committee to negotiate an end to the killings in the Ituri province, but a March local cease-fire agreement has failed to halt violence even as tribal and community leaders meet in Bunia to talk peace.
After Ugandan troops expelled UPC forces from Bunia last month, Rwanda threatened to send its army back into Congo, kindling fears of open warfare between the two former allies.
SCENE OF ATROCITIES
Ituri province has seen some of the war's worst atrocities.
Thousands of people were reported killed near Bunia in a fortnight-long Lendu onslaught against Hema and other tribes last September which began with a bloody attack on a hospital.
Much of Ituri is controlled by troops from Uganda, the last foreign state to have soldiers openly in Congo, although it has pledged to withdraw by April 24.
Captain Felix Kulayigye, Ugandan army spokesman in Bunia, said Ugandan forces estimated the death toll in Drodro and the surrounding settlements was between 350 and 400.
But UPC officials accused Uganda of siding with the Lendu and using Lendu militiamen to contain the Hema.
"UPC believes the massacres were carried out by militia from the Lendu tribe, backed by the Uganda soldiers," said a senior UPC official, speaking by telephone from the eastern Congolese town of Goma, headquarters of the main Rwandan-backed rebellion.
"Our men in Bunia say it is looking all very tense this morning and you understand a people that have just lost a thousand men would be regrouping and planning what to do next. A massacre never vanishes quietly, it is a cycle," he said.
Thursday's killings came hours after the Congo's government and rebel leaders signed a deal on a transition government in the capital Kinshasa, 1,500 miles to the west.
At a special ceremony in Kinshasa on Monday, President Joseph Kabila was sworn in as head of the new government, pledging to defend a power-sharing constitution. But there was no sign of the rebel leaders due to govern with him.
© 2003 Reuters
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