The United Nations says a Pakistani UN peacekeeper has been killed in an ambush in the strife-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said late Tuesday that the convoy was attacked by unidentified assailants in South Kivu, AFP reported on Wednesday.

Nesirky said that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was “appalled” by the attack on the peacekeepers and called on the Congolese government to launch an investigation into the incident.

Ban “condemns in the strongest terms the killing of a Pakistani peacekeeper in this attack. He recalls that the killing of peacekeepers is a war crime that falls under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court,” Nesirky added.


The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) has more than 17,750 troops and military observers and 1,400 police in the DRC to help the Congolese authorities in their stabilization and peace consolidation efforts.

The UN Security Council voted in March to create an additional intervention brigade of more than 2,500 troops in eastern DRC to take on armed rebels groups operating in the area.

Several armed groups, including the March 23 movement (M23) rebels, are active in the eastern Congo and fighting for control of the country’s vast mineral resources, such as gold, the main tin ore cassiterite, and coltan (columbite-tantalite), which is used to make many electronic devices, including cell phones.

The M23 rebels seized Goma on November 20, 2012 after UN peacekeepers gave up the battle for the frontier city of one million people. M23 fighters withdrew from the city on December 1 under a ceasefire accord.

The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese Army in April 2012 in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.

Since early May 2012, nearly three million people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. About 2.5 million have resettled in Congo, but more than 460,000 have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on since 1998 and left over 5.5 million people dead.