BUNIA, DRCongo, 2 September 2003 — EU peacekeepers in Bunia, a flash point in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formally handed over authority yesterday to a UN force with a broadened mandate.
“Today’s violence is no more than the last spasms of a spent conflict,” William Swing, the head of the UN Observer Mission for Congo (MONUC), said at the ceremony.
“Our role is not only to consolidate what has been achieved but also to extend security over the rest of Ituri,” Swing said.
He congratulated the European Union and France for the work of the French-led EU force, known as Artemis, which had been deployed since June in Bunia, capital of Ituri Province where ethnic violence between the majority Lendus and the minority Hema tribe has left some 50,000 dead since 1999.
Ituri is the main remaining trouble spot in the DRC, where a peace process is under way following a bitter war that has claimed an estimated 2.5 million lives, either in combat or through disease and hunger, since 1998.
The official handover in Bunia to Gen. Mountaga Diallo, military commander of the UN force, came after a two-week transition that started on Aug. 16.
The UN force, called the Ituri Brigade, will operate under a wider mandate than Artemis, which was restricted to Bunia, and will deploy outside the provincial capital over the next two weeks, according to Diallo.
The UN soldiers are permitted to engage hostile forces before being fired on and to operate throughout Ituri. The new UN force will also have more firepower at its disposal, including the use of attack helicopters.
Some 2,400 UN peacekeepers, mainly from Uruguay, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Indonesia are already in Bunia, and a Nepalese contingent will bring the total to around 4,000 from October, compared with the Artemis total of about 1,000.
The local population hopes the stronger UN force will prevent a situation such as that in May, which saw intense fighting between rival militia, despite the presence of 700 Uruguayan troops.
On the eve of yesterday’s handover, fighting broke out Friday and Saturday between the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) — the dominant armed group in the region from the minority Hema community — and Lendu militia around Fataki, a town some 120 km north of Bunia.
A reconnaissance mission by the UN force Saturday found Fataki “totally destroyed and deserted,” spokesman Leo Salmeron said.
A tribal militia official claimed yesterday that more than 200 civilians had been killed in the last six weeks in the region.
“There have been more than 200 deaths among the civilian population since mid-July,” said Saba Rafiki of UPC. Officials from the United Nations were unable to confirm the report.
Witnesses had told AFP last month that around 60 civilians had been killed in ethnic violence in the region around Fataki in the first two weeks of August.
