UN to cut support for Congolese army after civilian killings

Nov 2, 2009, 11:32 GMT

Nairobi - United Nations peacekeepers are to stop working with a Congolese army unit after it massacred 62 civilians, many of them women and children, the head of the peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo said Monday.

'According to our information, civilians were clearly the target of attacks by certain elements of FARDC (the Congolese army),' Alain Leroy, head of the force, dubbed MONUC, told the UN-backed Radio Okapi.

'We have decided that MONUC will immediately suspend its logistical and operational support to the units implicated in these killings.'

Leroy, who toured the conflict-hit east of DR Congo, said the killings took place around Lukweti, around 80 kilometres from Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, between May and September.

Aid agencies have persistently accused the DR Congo's army of indiscriminately killing Hutu civilians.

The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, last month accused the army of killing and raping dozens of civilians in a separate attack and said MONUC had compromised its ability to investigate abuses by becoming party to the conflict.

MONUC has this year supported operations aimed at snuffing out Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Rwandan Hutu group FDLR.

The latter was formed by militia who fled Rwanda after taking part in the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It has played a role in the DR Congo's ongoing unrest for over a decade.