https://www.polity.org.za
Deepening Democracy through Access to Information
Home / News / All News RSS ← Back
Close

Email this article

separate emails by commas, maximum limit of 4 addresses

Sponsored by

Close

Embed Video

UN peacekeepers deploy throughout DRC

13th October 2003

SAVE THIS ARTICLE      EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

Font size: -+

UN peacekeepers will deploy to another three villages in the strife-torn Ituri province after having set up a permanent presence near the site of a massacre of 65 people, the UN special envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said yesterday.

"The permanent deployment began Friday" with the dispatch of some 175 troops to Bule, said UN Special Represenative to DRC William Swing.

Bule is 90 km northeast of Bunia, the capital of the northeastern Ituri province where clashes between Lendu and Hema ethnic militias have claimed some 50 000 lives since 1999.

It is also located only five kilometers from Kachele where 65 people, thought to be from the minority Hema tribe, were killed and a score were wounded on October 6.

"We'll finish the first phase of deployment by the end of the week," he told journalists.

UN peacekeepers are due to set up operations at Iga Barrier, 25 km north of Bunia and at Bogoro and Marabo, 25 and 38 km south of Bunia.

Since taking over from a smaller French-led EU force on September 1, the 3 300-strong contingent of troops attached to the existing UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, known as Monuc, has largely stayed in Bunia apart from reconnaissance missions.

An escalation of the violence, which has caused some half a million people to flee their homes, led to the deployment of a French-led EU security force in Bunia in June.

Troops of Monuc's Ituri Brigade, as the new UN force is called are mandated to deploy across Ituri, a region about twice the size of Belgium.

UN peacekeepers were shot at by unknown gunmen Saturday near a village close to Kachele and returned fire, a Monuc spokesperson said yesterday.

No UN peacekeepers were injured in the incident near Petro, the village from which the perpetrators of the massacre are believed to have set off from for Kachele, and they made no arrests. – Sapa-AFP.
Advertisement

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE      SAVE THIS ARTICLE      FEEDBACK

To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here


About

Polity.org.za is a product of Creamer Media.
www.creamermedia.co.za

Other Creamer Media Products include:
Engineering News
Mining Weekly
Research Channel Africa

Read more

Subscriptions

We offer a variety of subscriptions to our Magazine, Website, PDF Reports and our photo library.

Subscriptions are available via the Creamer Media Store.

View store

Advertise

Advertising on Polity.org.za is an effective way to build and consolidate a company's profile among clients and prospective clients. Email advertising@creamermedia.co.za

View options

Email Registration Success

Thank you, you have successfully subscribed to one or more of Creamer Media’s email newsletters. You should start receiving the email newsletters in due course.

Our email newsletters may land in your junk or spam folder. To prevent this, kindly add newsletters@creamermedia.co.za to your address book or safe sender list. If you experience any issues with the receipt of our email newsletters, please email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za