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DR Congo troops killed 500 civilians since March: HRW

Mozambique's Guebuza seen as landslide polls winner
Mozambique's President Armando Guebuza was declared the "landslide" winner of last week's polls by two election monitoring groups on Monday. Frelimo, Mozambique's ruling party since independence in 1975, had 71 percent of the vote with 89 percent of polling stations reporting, said the Center for Public Integrity and the Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa.

Guebuza was winning the presidential race comfortably with 76 percent of the presidential vote, based on an analysis of provisional returns showing a huge victory for the leader who is seeking a second and final term. "Guebuza landslide," the two organisations declared in their regular election newsletter. The race for second place -- closely watched in the wake of a recent opposition split -- was being won by long-time opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, who had claimed 15 percent of the vote.

Daviz Simango, founder of the breakaway Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), was in third place with 9 percent. In the parliamentary race, Frelimo was on track to jump from 160 seats to at least 193 seats in Mozambique's 250-seat parliament with Renamo beating the MDM 17 percent to four percent. Final results are expected by November 12, after election officials have tabulated province-level results and reviewed rejected ballots. Last Wednesday's vote was Mozambique's fourth national poll since a 16-year civil war between Renamo and the Frelimo government ended in the establishment of multi-party democracy in 1994.

by Staff Writers
 Kinshasa (AFP) Nov 2, 2009
 Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers have "deliberately killed" more than 500 civilians since March during an offensive targeting rebels in the country's east, Human Rights Watch said Monday.

"Human Rights Watch conducted 21 fact-finding missions in North and South Kivu from January to October 2009, and found that Congolese army soldiers had deliberately killed at least 505 civilians from the start of operation Kimia II in March through September," it said.

North and South Kivu are provinces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, while Kimia II is the name of the offensive targeting rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

"Another 198 civilians were deliberately killed by Congolese army soldiers and their Rwandan army allies during an earlier five-week joint operation, known as Umoja Wetu, in late January and February," the rights group said.

Earlier on Monday, a top UN official announced that the United Nations had withdrawn its support for Congolese army units operating in the east, accusing its soldiers of killing 62 civilians.

Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that at least 81 civilians were killed in early August when Congolese army soldiers attacked five hamlets within a few kilometres of one another around 15 kilometres (nine miles) from a UN base.

"The attacking Congolese soldiers made no distinction between combatants and civilians, shooting many at close range or chopping their victims to death with machetes," the rights group said.

"In one of the hamlets, Katanda, Congolese army soldiers decapitated four young men, cut off their arms, and then threw their heads and limbs 20 meters away from their bodies.

"The soldiers then raped 16 women and girls, including a 12-year-old girl, later killing four of them."

Human Rights Watch also reported brutal revenge attacks by the FDLR militia, which it said had deliberately targeted Congolese civilians in response to government military operations.

Between January and September the militia group deliberately killed at least 630 civilians, the rights body said.

Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: "War crimes committed by the FDLR militia are absolutely no justification for Congolese government soldiers to commit atrocities."

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AFRICA NEWS
African Union, US slap sanctions on Guinea junta
 Abuja (AFP) Oct 30, 2009
 African leaders and the United States have joined the European Union in imposing fresh sanctions on Guinea's military rulers after last month's massacre of scores of opposition supporters. Heads of states who sit on the African Union Peace and Security Council decided "to take all the necessary measures towards the implementation of targeted sanctions including denial of visas, travel restri ... read more






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