Women killed and mutilated in Congo attack - U.N.

April 6, 2005 - (Reuters) At least nine women have been murdered and their bodies mutilated by a militia terrorising civilians in Democratic Republic of Congo's copper-rich Katanga province, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The attack highlights lawlessness in the remote southern province where thousands have been displaced by ongoing attacks and U.N. peacekeepers are stretched due to conflict elsewhere in the vast central African nation.

"Nine women were killed and their bodies mutilated by a group of Mai Mai during an attack on government troops at Nkonga," Sonia Bakar, head of special investigations for the U.N. mission's human rights department, told reporters.

Bakar said the attack happened last month, just over 500 km (312 miles) northwest of the provincial capital of Lubumbashi.

Peace deals struck in 2003 officially ended a five-year war in Congo, but fighting simmers in much of the east and nearly all of the U.N.'s 16,000 troops have been deployed in Ituri and North and South Kivu, leaving hardly any for Katanga.

Little progress has been made integrating the plethora of armed groups into a cohesive national army and the Mai Mai, a rag-tag militia that operates across eastern Congo, remains largely out of control in Katanga.

Human rights investigators estimate 5,000 people have been displaced by the latest clashes and say they were told 15 villages had been razed.

U.N. sources said, Pasteur Mulunda, head of a local non-government organisation and spiritual advisor to President Joseph Kabila, has promised to distribute bicycles to Mai Mai warriors who hand in their weapons.

But the initiative has proved controversial and led to many of the Mai Mai attacks.

In February, near Katala, 500km (312 miles) northwest of Lubumbashi, Mai Mai who handed in guns and did not receive their bicycles, went on the rampage, killing at least seven people and causing more than 4,000 to flee their homes, U.N. human rights investigators confirmed in late March.

Continuing instability is killing 1,000 people every day in Congo, mostly from hunger and disease, on top of the 3.8 million people who have died since the war began in 1998.

From: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06158827.htm