un: congo militiamen grilled and boiled victims

UN: Congo militiamen grilled and boiled victims
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

KINSHASA, Congo

Militiamen grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, U.N. peacekeepers charged, adding cannibalism to a list of atrocities allegedly carried out by one of the tribal groups fighting in northeast Congo.

"Those responsible for atrocities will be brought to justice," Gen. Patrick Cammaert, the Dutch Navy commander of U.N. forces in Congo, told reporters Wednesday in presenting a report on abuses allegedly committed by the Patriotic Resistant Front of Ituri.

Cammaert said peacekeepers also were working to cut off weapons supplies to the group, which apparently entered the country from neighboring Uganda.

Front Militiamen were suspected of killing nine U.N. peacekeepers in a Feb. 25 ambush. On March 1, militiamen fired on Pakistani peacekeepers and the peacekeepers fought back, killing up to 60 fighters, U.N. officials said at the time.

Congo became a battleground for six nations during a 1998-2002 war that killed some 50,000 people directly and another 3 million through strife-induced hunger and disease. But sporadic fighting continues between militiamen, rebels and government troops in the lawless northeast.

The fighting there is killing thousands every month and has made it the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said in Geneva on Wednesday.