The UN on Friday detailed more than 250 "extrajudicial or targeted killings" in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region from mid-March to mid-June, counting dozens of children among the dead. The findings, based on interviews with refugees from Kasai who had fled to Angola, blamed state agents for the murders of seven children. The refugees gave harrowing accounts of the violence in the region, which the UN warned had taken on "an increasing and disturbing ethnic dimension."
Victims recounted mutilations, including of a seven-year-old boy whose fingers were cut off, and an attack on a hospital in the village of Cinq where 90 people were killed, some because they were too injured to escape a raging fire. Aside from government troops, the UN blamed a state-backed militia called the Bana Mura as well as the anti-government Kamuina Nsapu militia for a range of atrocities.
"Survivors have spoken of hearing the screams of people being burned alive, of seeing loved ones chased and cut down, of themselves fleeing in terror", the United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement. A team of UN investigators "was able to confirm that between 12 March and 19 June some 251 people were the victims of extrajudicial and targeted killings", the report said.
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