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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

DRC: Renewed fighting reported in Fataki

NAIROBI, 5 August 2003 (IRIN) - Another attack on the village of Fataki, about 80 km north of Bunia, the main town of the troubled Ituri District of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), is reported to have taken place on Saturday and Sunday, according to the Missionary Service News Agency (MISNA).

MISNA said on Monday that the attack was believed to have been carried out by ethnic Lendu militias that control the area. Fataki was the scene of a massacre of an estimated 80 civilians two weeks earlier.

"It was another scene from Hell," a local clergy person was quoted as telling MISNA.

The witnesses said that the local orphanage, hospital, market, church and convent were all pillaged and destroyed by armed men who appeared to be drugged or drunken.

MISNA reported that it had not yet received any information regarding casualties. It said it had also received reports of fighting in the Ituri towns of Bula, Ka and Sombuso.

Due to prevailing insecurity, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, has been unable to deploy outside Bunia, while the EU-led mission sent to reinforce MONUC is not mandated to operate beyond the confines of the town.

However, the UN Security Council recently adopted a resolution giving MONUC a stronger mandate and increasing its authorised strength from 8,700 to 10,800 troops. The council also extended the mission's mandate for another year, until 30 July 2004.

Economically driven ethnic strife in natural resource-rich Ituri between Hema and Lendu militias had prompted between 200,000 and 350,000 people to flee when fighting intensified in May, humanitarian sources reported.

None of the ethnic-based militias fighting for control of Ituri is signatory to the national power-sharing accord that led to the installation on 30 June of a new government led by Kabila.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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