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. 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.
It took days for help to arrive, even though the villages are 12 miles from a camp of U.N. peacekeepers from India. The U.N. says the peacekeepers drove through one of the villages but took no action because no one told them what was going on.
Violence is reaching new levels of savagery, spiraling out of control in this corner of Congo, where competition for control of mineral resources has drawn in several armed groups, including the Congolese army. Rape has become a military strategy to intimidate, punish and control the population in the mining areas.
News of the most brutal gang rapes in eastern Congo came in August, bringing international outrage. The U.N. said more than 500 women were raped in that period.
The victims from the five villages near Walikale alone number about 250, with more coming for treatment this week, said Dr. Chris Baguma of Los Angeles-based International Medical Corps. He said he expects the toll to rise.
Some have infections resistant to antibiotics, he said.
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.
Victims told doctors they were attacked by a mixed group of fighters: members of the local Mai-Mai militia led by a man who calls himself Commander Cheka; Rwandan Hutu rebels led by perpetrators of that neighboring country’s 1994 genocide; and some former fighters of a Congolese Tutsi rebellion that professed itself a sworn enemy of the Rwandan rebels.
Cheka denied his fighters were involved. In an interview with Radio Kivu Un, he blamed the Rwandan rebels and denied they were allies. It is unclear whether that statement might have come after he learned that his family also was raped.
