Congo: massacri in una gurra dimenticata

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

Congo massacre 'leaves 1,000 dead'

By Mark Dummett
BBC correspondent in Kinshasa

Survivors of a massacre in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have
told UN human rights investigators that nearly 1,000 civilians were killed
last Thursday on the eve of talks to bring peace to the war-ravaged Ituri
district.
The investigators from the UN peace-keeping mission in Congo (or Monuc) flew
into Drodro - near the border with Uganda - on Saturday where they
interviewed eyewitnesses and visited mass graves.
The Monuc spokesman in Kinshasa, Hamadoun Toure, said survivors in Drodro
town had compiled a list of 966 victims of a killing spree that lasted three
hours, early on Thursday morning.
Devastation
The investigators who went to Drodro - some 80 kilometres (50 miles) from
the district capital, Bunia - said they spoke to community leaders, priests
and 15 eyewitnesses.
 They visited the sites of 20 mass graves, where they reported seeing the
traces of blood and the clothing of victims.
Forty-nine survivors of the attack in Drodro hospital bore machete and
bullet wounds.
The killings occurred just before the launch on Friday of the negotiations
most people hope will bring an end to the cycle of appalling inter-ethnic
and factional violence that has devastated north-eastern Congo during the
past four years.
Local groups say the clashes that started out as a simple land dispute
between pastoralists and farmers have killed more than 50,000 people and
displaced a further 500,000.