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Six Red Cross Workers Shot, Hacked to Death in Congo
Attackers in Congo shot and hacked to death six workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the deadliest attack on the aid group in five years, international aid officials said Friday.
The dead in Thursday's assault were a Swiss nurse, a Colombian relief worker and four Congolese.
A Ugandan military patrol found the bodies by their two vehicles in rebel- and Ugandan-held northeast Congo, said Antoine Atawamba, spokesman for the organization in the Congo capital of Kinshasa.
Some of the victims had been shot; others were both shot and slashed with machetes, said Boni Mbaka, a U.N. official in the far northeast border town of Bunia who saw some of the bodies.
"It's very horrible. There were no survivors (so) it's difficult to say what happened," Mbaka said.
The bodies were found about 40 miles north of Bunia. The teams had been heading to a remote health center with medicine, said Paul Castella, head of the ICRC delegation in Kinshasa.
Colleagues grew alarmed Thursday afternoon after losing what had been regular radio contact with the teams, and triggered the search, Red Cross officials said.
The killings took place in Ituri province, which is under the control of the Congolese Liberation Front, a Ugandan-backed rebel group led by Jean-Pierre Bemba.
The region has been plagued by fighting among Hema pastoralists and Lendu farmers for control of rich grasslands. Fighting had subsided in recent months following peace talks.
The aid group immediately suspended operations in the area A decision would come later on whether to pull its staff �� roughly 20 expatriates and 200 Congolese �� out of east Congo.
U.N. relief agencies and international nonprofit agencies based in eastern Congo were meeting late Friday to decide whether to continue humanitarian operations in the region, Alexandre Gashangi of the U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said.
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