Congo: Slaughter in Bunia
11 minutes, 2003
Ref: 343

Dead bodies litter Bunia's empty streets. From some the blood still drips from machete slashes, spear thrusts and bullet wounds. Others are two weeks old and stinking, half-eaten by the packs of dogs flopping lazily about the once-prosperous north-eastern capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are women's bodies scattered in Bunia's main mar ket place; a baby's body on its main road; two priests' bodies inside one church. Last week, a burning corpse was tossed on to the main UN compound's lawn, to show 700 Uruguayan peacekeepers what they were missing while they cowered under fire behind its razor-wire perimeter, unauthorised to intervene in the latest massacre of Congolese civilians. The battle for Bunia began on March 6, as Ugandan troops withdrew from the town in line with a recent peace accord. With the UN mission in Congo unable to fill the vacuum - having only 4,000 troops to police an area two-thirds the size of western Europe - a massacre in Bunia had been widely predicted. "Does the world care what happens to Congo? No," said Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel Vollot, the French commander of UN forces in Ituri. "We've been sending messages every day to [the UN headquarters in] New York [saying] this was going to happen, that we need more troops. Nothing was done." The Lendus took the town, and began looting and killing Hema civilians, putting 250,000 people to flight. Among the 12,000 that remained, crammed against the razor wire of the UN compound, was Safi Sabina, 32. "People were screaming, we were running from the machetes," she said, bowing her head to the baby in her lap as she began to cry. Her father, mother, two aunts and three young brothers and sisters were all murdered by the militiamen. And in Bunia's main hospital, another reminder that violence in Ituri is long-running and, unless there is an intervention, likely to be on-going.