CONGO: Eight Guatemalan special forces soldiers deployed as UN peacekeepers in eastern Congo were killed and five more were injured yesterday during an operation against Ugandan rebels, the United Nations said.
The UN peacekeeping force in Congo said that for the past 10 days, 80 Guatemalan soldiers had been carrying out reconnaissance operations in Congo's Garamba National Park, on the border with Sudan, looking for members of neighbouring Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
"The unit, which was conducting an operation in this area, established contact with rebel elements at 6am. There followed an exchange of fire lasting four hours, requiring the intervention of armed helicopters," the UN said.
Officials said at least 15 LRA fighters were killed.
"There are at least 15 of them dead but we are still counting . . . The group, which we estimate to have been 50 or 60, has been mostly killed or wounded," said the UN military spokesman for the eastern division, Maj Hans-Jakob Reichen.
The losses were among the worst suffered by the UN force in Congo. Nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers were killed in a rebel ambush in the nearby Ituri district in February 2005.
The injured Guatemalan peacekeepers were taken to hospital in the Congolese town of Bunia, the UN said.
"Soldiers from the Nepalese contingent were taken by helicopter to the site of the clashes to secure the zone and undertake mopping-up operations," it added.
The LRA is one of a number of Ugandan rebel groups still operating in north eastern Congo after a five-year war which officially ended with a peace deal signed in 2003.
Led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, the LRA has terrorised remote communities on Uganda's border with Sudan, killing villagers, slicing off survivors' lips or ears and abducting more than 20,000 children as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
LRA fighters entered Congo last year and the UN is keen to prevent yet another foreign rebel group from getting a foothold in Congo's already lawless east as it prepares for elections this year following a constitutional referendum in December.
Peacekeepers are also under pressure from Uganda, which has threatened to send its own troops - a move that would be seen as bad for Congo's peace process because Ugandan forces entered Congo during the war in support of a Congolese rebel group.