Congo militia kills 16 people

KINSHASA, Congo – Militiamen armed with guns and machetes killed 16 people and kidnapped at least 34 girls in attacks this week in a remote area of eastern Congo, a U.N. spokesman said Saturday.

Two platoons of U.N. peacekeepers arrived in the area by helicopter early Saturday to protect the population from further violence, U.N. spokesman Christophe Boulierarch said by telephone from Bunia, capital of Ituri province. Bunia is 40 miles south of Che, an area that has been attacked several times since Jan. 19.

Earlier this week, aid workers with the group German Agro Action reported seeing burning houses and residents streaming out of Che as it was under attack.

Boulierarch cited witnesses as saying that 34 girls had been kidnapped from Che and two others were missing.

Residents told the U.N. that 15 people were murdered by armed ethnic Lendu militiamen. Boulierarch said he saw the body of an old man along the road outside town who had been shot in the head. Ituri has long been the scene of savage fighting between ethnic Lendu and Hema militias.

Since 1999, fighting in Ituri has killed more than 50,000 and forced 500,000 to flee their homes, U.N. officials and human rights groups say.

The Ituri conflict was part of a larger, five-year, six-nation war in Congo that killed nearly 4 million people, mostly through starvation and disease. The 1998-2002 war ended with the creation of a transitional government in 2003 that has struggled to extend its authority to the vast country’s often lawless east.

During the war, both neighboring Uganda and Rwanda armed the Hema and Lendu militias, mainly to wrest control of the mineral-rich territory. The two sides eventually turned on one another.