Friday, December 8, 2017

Rebels kill 14 UN Peacekeepers in Congo

                                                UN


Fourteen United Nations peacekeepers were killed and many more were wounded in an attack late Thursday in eastern Congo, according to the U.N. mission in the country.

The attack appeared to be the deadliest on peacekeepers since 1993, when 23 were slain in an attack in Mogadishu, Somalia.
The majority of those killed and injured in the Congo attack were from Tanzania, according to a U.N. official in New York, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay details of the attack. The details of the assault remained vague on Friday, with the top U.N. peacekeeping official writing in a tweet about the incident.

“Outraged by the attack against MONUSCO in #NorthKivu DRC last evening, where a large number of UN peacekeepers have been killed & wounded,” wrote Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations.
news release from the peacekeeping mission in Congo, known by the acronym MONUSCO, said 14 peacekeepers were killed and 53 wounded in Thursday’s attack.

MONUSCO is the largest and most expensive U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, with roughly 19,000 peacekeepers.

In recent months, violence in eastern Congo has spiked with clashes between rebels and security forces and inter-communal violence that has left thousands dead and prompted a new wave of refugees to flee the country.

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