Rebels gang rape nearly 200 women, says aid worker

RWANDAN and Congolese rebels gang-raped nearly 200 women and some young boys over four days within miles of a UN peacekeepers’ base in an eastern Congo mining district, an American aid worker and a Congolese doctor said yesterday.

Will F Cragin of the International Medical Corps said aid workers knew rebels had occupied Luvungi town and surrounding villages in eastern Congo the day after the attack began on July 30. UN agencies sent text messages to phones saying the area was occupied, he said.

More than three weeks later, the UN mission has issued no statement about the atrocities and said Monday it still is investigating.

Cragin told The Associated Press that his organisation was only able to get into the town, which he said is about 15km from a UN military camp, after rebels ended their brutal spree of raping and looting and withdrew of their own accord on August 4.

There was no fighting and no deaths, he said, just “lots of pillaging and the systematic raping of women” by between 200 and 400 rebels.

Four young boys also were raped, said Dr Kasimbo Charles Kacha, the district medical chief.

“Many women said they were raped in their homes in front of their children and husbands,” Cragin said. Others were dragged into the nearby forest.

He said that by the time they got help it was too late to administer medication against AIDS and contraception to all but three of the survivors.

Many women said they were raped repeatedly by three to six attackers, Cragin said.

International and local health workers have treated 179 women but the number raped could be much higher as terrified civilians are still hiding, he said.

“We keep going back and identifying more and more cases,” he said. “Many of the women are returning from the forest naked, with no clothes.”

Survivors said their attackers were from the Rwandan rebel FDLR group that includes perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide who fled across the border to Congo in 1994 and have been terrorising the population in eastern Congo ever since, according to Cragin. The Rwandans were accompanied by Congolese Mai-Mai rebels, he said, quoting survivors.