Friday, March 3, 2006

Congolese troops turn against UN peacekeepers

CONGOLESE soldiers who were fighting alongside United Nations (UN) peacekeepers against ethnic militiamen have turned against their co-fighters, ransacking a UN camp and firing on a helicopter belonging to the world body.

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The mutiny began on Wednesday and forced the suspension of a joint UN and Congo army operation to retake the eastern town of Tchei in Ituri district from an ethnic militia, said Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Medard, UN military spokesman in the capital, Kinshasa.

"About 50 soldiers have mutinied. Yesterday, they refused to fight and returned to their base in Aveba where they threatened their superiors," he said.

A senior UN official also said: "Right now we have had to stop the joint operation because the army that we are supposed to be fighting alongside is incapable of maintaining discipline. This is unacceptable."

With the Democratic Republic of Congo's first free national elections in 40 years due in a few months, the United Nations has stepped up attempts to help Kinshasa's forces pacify the east, where rebels and militia still roam three years after war officially ended.

But a chaotic new national army forged from several foreign-backed factions which fought in the 1998-2003 war, is struggling to overcome divisions in its midst and is accused of continuing the rape and murder that Congo's people have suffered during years of warfare.

Aveba is about 65 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of Bunia, the main town in Ituri district, and was being used as the advance base for the operation to retake Tchei.

"The UN took them (the senior officers) into their protection. But the mutineers pillaged a UN store," Medard said.

A senior UN official told Reuters that mutineers had fired on a UN helicopter carrying the Congolese army's senior commander in the area, General Padiri Bulenda, and forced it to turn back.

"We were in the process of flying General Padiri to Aveba. When they tried to land with the general, they were shot at by the mutineers and had to leave," the official said.