Violence spirals out of control in east Congo

September 18, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WALIKALE, Congo

First the rebel soldiers told residents of the villages in the mineral-rich eastern Congo not to worry. They were just there for a rest and would do no harm. But as dusk fell, the fighters encircled five villages simultaneously, and the gang rapes began.

Six or seven men lined up to take their turn. The victims ranged from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother. They forced husbands and children to watch as they gang-raped the villagers for four days.

It took days for help to arrive, even though the villages are 12 miles from a camp of U.N. peacekeepers from India.

Violence is reaching new levels of savagery and spiraling out of control in this corner of Congo, where the competition for control of mineral resources has drawn in several armed groups, including the Congolese army. Rape has become a military strategy by the various groups of fighters to intimidate, punish and control the population in the mining areas.

No one was killed in the attack, and the villages are so poor that there is little to loot, leaving people to conclude that the rapes, and forcing families to watch, was some form of punishment — for what, no one is sure.

A nurse whose responsibility included three of the villages showed an Associated Press reporter a list with names of 124 victims and pointed to those he said were the mother, wife, two sisters and three cousins of the militia commander whose fighters allegedly were among the attackers.