14 U.N. peacekeepers killed
Congo militants attack Tanzanian troops
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations said on Friday that at least 14 peacekeepers, all from Tanzania, were killed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by militant extremists. It was the deadliest assault on the organization’s peacekeeping forces in nearly a quarter century.
Five Congolese soldiers also died and at least 40 other people were injured when the militants attacked a United Nations base in the North-Kivu region on Thursday evening, the organization said in a statement from its mission in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.
United Nations peacekeeping officials attributed the attack to a militant group known as the Allied Democratic Forces, which has its origins in neighboring Uganda and is accused of killing hundreds of people overthe past three years.
The Ugandan government has sought to link the group Al-Qaeda and the Shabab, the Islamic militants that have terrorized Somalia. But while the Allied Democratic Forces are mostly Muslim, United Nations peacekeeping officials said, the group does not appear to be driven by religious extremist ideology but more by profit. Its members prey on the mining industry in North Kivu through extortion and other gangster-like behavior.
Maman Sidikou, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Kinshasa, said the fighters had attacked the mission’s operating base in the Beni territory, near the Uganda border.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, condemned the attack, saying it constituted “a war crime” and was the worst attack on peacekeepers in recent history.
“I want to express my outrage and utter heartbreak at last night’s attack on United Nations peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Mr. Guterres said.
Peacekeeping officials said the North Kivu attack constituted the worst single loss since 22 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed in Somalia in 1993.
The United Nations declined to say how many militants were killed in the North Kivu attack, but a spokesman for the Congolese Army in North Kivu, Capt. Mak Hazukay, said 72 died.