At least 15 people were killed and about 50 wounded during a second day of violent anti-United Nations protests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s eastern cities of Goma and Butembo, authorities have said, the Guardian reported.
The dead included demonstrators and UN personnel as UN sites were attacked by crowds.
A Reuters journalist reported seeing UN peacekeepers shoot dead two protesters as people threw rocks, and vandalised and set fire to UN buildings in Goma.
The demonstrations began on Monday, when hundreds of people attacked and looted a UN warehouse in the city, a regional hub for international aid groups, demanding the mission leave the country. They flared again on Tuesday and spread to Butembo, about 124 miles (200km) north of Goma.
The protests were called by a faction of the ruling party’s youth wing that accuses the UN mission, known as Monusco, of failing to protect civilians against militia violence.
“Mobs are throwing stones and petrol bombs, breaking into bases, looting and vandalising, and setting facilities on fire,” deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters in New York.
Some stormed the houses of UN workers who were evacuated from Goma in a convoy of vehicles escorted by the army, a reporter said.
One peacekeeper and two UN police personnel were killed when their base in Butembo was attacked, the UN spokesperson said. Butembo’s police chief, Paul Ngoma, said that seven civilians were also killed when the peacekeepers retaliated.
“The situation is very volatile and reinforcements are being mobilised,” Haq said, adding that UN forces had been told to exercise maximum restraint and only fire warning shots.
The government spokesperson, Patrick Muyaya, had said earlier that at least five people were killed and about 50 wounded in Goma. The Reuters reporter in Goma said peacekeepers fired teargas and live bullets at the crowd, killing two and wounding at least two others, according to the Guardian.
Protesters were initially peaceful, but turned violent as some picked teargas grenades off the ground and threw them back at the Monusco warehouse.
Ngoma said demonstrators attacked the Monusco base there with stones and gunfire. “That’s how three Monusco peacekeepers died. On the population side the provisional report shows seven dead as Monusco also reacted with weapons,” he said.
India’s foreign minister said two of the peacekeepers who died were Indian. Ngoma said the third was Moroccan.
Among the demonstrators were militiamen recruited from the bush who brought weapons, he said, adding that the number of wounded was unknown.
Monusco, the UN’s stabilisation mission in the DRC, has been gradually withdrawing from the country for years, the Guardian reported.
