New massacre reported in northeast Congo
KINSHASA, Oct 6 (Reuters) - U.N. peacekeeping troops discovered 23 bodies in a village in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday, in what appeared to be the latest in a series of massacres of civilians.
A local leader from the Hema ethnic group, locked in a vicious conflict with the rival Lendu, said the victims of the attack were Hema killed by Lendu.
"They were mostly killed by machetes and bullets," Isabelle Abric, a U.N. spokeswoman in the region's main town Bunia, told Reuters by telephone.
She said local people at the scene, five km (three miles) south of the town of Bule which is about 70 km (40 miles) northeast of Bunia, told peacekeepers another 32 civilians had also been killed in the attack early on Monday.
The bodies of the 32 had already been buried following the attack early on Monday, Abric quoted the local people as saying. The U.N. troops did not see them.
The incident follows recent apparent progress in U.N. efforts to broker peace in the region, after a series of similar atrocities in and around towns such as Bule and Sataki in the Ituri region in the northeast of the vast country.
"It's the Lendu who have attacked (on Monday), the same Lendu who are reposnsible for attacking Bule and Sataki," Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an etnic Hema rebel movement backed by Rwanda, told Reuters by telephone.
He accused the two main Lendu political groups, the FNI and FRPI, of being responsible.
"The FNI and FRPI are the same groups as the Lendus who are involved in these massacres," he said.
The UN has been bringing together the FNI, FRPI, the UPC and other armed groups to discuss cantonment of soldiers and disarmament in Ituri Province. Peace marches have been held by both sides in Bunia in recent weeks.
A force largely made up of Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepalese and Uruguayan peacekeepers recently replaced French-led troops sent to Bunia.
Conflict in Bunia and Ituri province has cost at least 50,000 lives since 1999. It is part of a wider war held responsible for millions of deaths in Africa's third biggest country over the past five years.
(Reporting by Dino Mahtani; editing by Andrew Roche)
10/06/03 18:26 ET
