Armed
groups in DR Congo's war-torn east province slaughtered more than 200
people including scores of children between April and September, hacking
some to death and burning others alive, the UN said Wednesday."At least 264 civilians, including 83 children, were arbitrarily executed by armed groups in more than 75 attacks on villages between April and September this year," the office of the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights said as it published a report into abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo's resource-rich east.
Investigators focusing on the southern town of Masisi in North Kivu province uncovered evidence of victims being hacked to death with machetes.
Others were burnt alive in their homes, investigators found, blaming the majority of the killings on two armed groups, Raia Mutomboki and their allies the Mayi Mayi.
Raia Mutomboki is a homeland defence militia whose agenda is to ethnically cleanse the region, forcing all Kinyarwanda speakers out of DR Congo. But it has also seized the villagers it purports to be protecting, using them as porters.
Fighters from an ethnic Hutu militia called Nyatura were also responsible for killings and other human rights abuses, the UN said, along with the Rwandan Hutu group the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which Kigali suspects includes fighters who took part in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
Following publication of the report -- the result of six missions and more than 160 interviews with victims and witnesses -- UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the killings as "the most serious (human rights violations) we have seen in recent times in the DRC."
