20091214

A damning report by the Human Rights Watch says more than 1,400 civilians were killed this year by both Congolese troops and rebels.

The report blamed a UN-backed military offensive in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, aimed at uprooting a rebel group involved in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, for sparking a bloodbath from January to September.

"Congolese army soldiers and FDLR [the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda] rebel combatants have attacked civilians, accused them of being collaborators, and 'punished' them by chopping many to death with machetes," said the report released Monday.

In January, the Congolese army launched an aggressive offensive against the FDLR — a Hutu militia that took part in the massacre of Rwanda's Tutsis in 1994 and has been accused of war crimes in Congo.

The HRW cited one witness as saying a number of victims were tied together before their throats were “slit like chickens.”

The rights group urged the United Nations, involved in the conflict since March when its regional peacekeeping mission joined the offensive, to set up a "civilian protection expert group."

The group would be tasked with devising measures to avoid the mounting civilian toll in the country's strife-torn east.

The 183-page report, titled "You Will Be Punished: Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo" and based on the testimony of some 600 victims and witnesses, also condemned all parties in the conflict for committing rape on a large scale.

"Over the first nine months of 2009, the UN recorded over 7,500 cases of sexual violence against women and girls across North and South Kivu in eastern Congo, nearly surpassing the figures recorded during all of last year, and probably representing only a fraction of the total," the report adds.

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