Three arrested over Congo killings
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Three militia fighters have been arrested in connection with the murders of nine U.N. peacekeepers on patrol in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday.
Floribert Njabu, President of the Nationalist Integrationist Front (FNI), Goda Sopka, also from FNI, and Germain Katanga, from the Patriotic Resistance Forces in Ituri, were all arrested in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, Dujarric said.
Katanga was recently made a general in the DRC's national army.
Nine Bangladeshi soldiers were killed Friday during a premeditated attack in the lawless eastern Ituri region of the DRC.
"It was one of the worst single-day incidences in recent peacekeeping history," said Dujarric.
"The mission believes that the premeditated attack was in response to efforts by peacekeepers to neutralize the militia which had been terrorizing the local population in addition to looting and carrying out illegal tax collection," Fred Eckhard, U.N. Spokesman said from U.N. headquarters in New York Friday.
The Bangladeshi troops were part of a larger U.N. peacekeeping force protecting residents who were fleeing from the regional violence in Ituri, as well as fighting local militia, Eckhard said.
Modibo Traore, a U.N. official in Bunia, the regional capital of Ituri, said the peacekeepers were part of 150 Bangladeshi soldiers based at a refugee camp in Ituri.
The nine soldiers were taking part in a 21-man foot patrol when it was ambushed five kilometers (three miles) west of Kafe, according to U.N. spokesman Mamadou Bah in Kinshasa.
U.N. peacekeepers, who have been in the war-torn central African country since November 1999, increased their presence in Ituri in May 2003 after an increase of ethnic violence in the region.
Fighting between Hema and Lendu tribes in Ituri has claimed more than 50,000 lives since 1999, according to the United Nations.
The latest violence in Ituri has prompted aid agencies to suspend assistance to 40,000 people sheltering in Kakwa and Tche, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement obtained by CNN Tuesday.
More than 54,000 recently displaced people are now without vital humanitarian assistance in Ituri.
