A UN peacekeeper was killed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in an attack by local militia, the UN said on Saturday.
The peacekeeper was shot and killed on Friday evening by suspected militiamen from the Twirwaneho group who had presented themselves at the Monusco camp in Minembwe, South Kivu, allegedly to surrender, according to a press release from the United Nations mission. in DR Congo (Monusco). “An attack on UN peacekeepers may constitute a war crime“, underlined Monusco.
Monusco did not specify the nationality of the soldier killed, but according to a Congolese army spokesman in Minembwe, it would be a sergeant and the camp is managed by the Pakistani contingent of Monusco.
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The Twirwaneho militia is one of the hundred or so armed groups that maintain permanent insecurity in the east of the DR Congo, which has caused several thousand deaths over the past ten years. This militia claims to defend the interests of the Banyamulenge community, a Congolese Tutsi minority.
The UN has been deployed in DR Congo since 1999 and currently has a contingent of some 16,000 troops.
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