\n The UN's peacekeeping mission in DR Congo led calls Friday for an investigation after the government said 50 villagers had been massacred by a notorious armed group in the country's troubled east.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Thursday, the government accused the M23 militia -- with whom it is locked in a months-long conflict -- of slaughtering 50 people at Kisheshe, a village some 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of the city of Goma.\n<\/p>\n
\n The M23 hit back, saying allegations were \"baseless\" and denying that it targeted any civilians.\n<\/p>\n
\n The UN mission MONUSCO on Friday condemned \"these horrifying acts\" and said its Joint Human Rights Office was standing by to help any probe.\n<\/p>\n
\n Denis Mukwege, the Congolese doctor who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for helping rape victims in the strife-torn region, also expressed his horror at reports of \"mass slaughter, missing people and forced recruitment of children\" into conflict.\n<\/p>\n
\n Representatives for the United States and European Union said the killings were potential war crimes, while Human Rights Watch (HRW) said UN troops should be deployed to protect survivors.\n<\/p>\n
\n The accusation was made in a statement by the armed forces, who said the massacre had occurred on Tuesday as the M23 was fighting with a local militia.\n<\/p>\n
\n AFP on Wednesday spoke to people in the area who said there had been a large but unknown number of deaths.\n<\/p>\n
\n They said the rebels had accused inhabitants of being militia members who had dressed up in civilian clothes to mount a furtive attack.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"There was blind retaliation,\" government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said on Friday, citing \"a doctor who says there were 120 dead.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n He said arrangements were being made with MONUSCO \"to go to the area and verify\" what had happened.\n<\/p>\n
\n The army, in its accusations on Thursday, also said the M23 had breached a ceasefire with government troops, a charge that the group also denied.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Truce agreement -\n<\/p>\n
\n The March 23 movement, or M23, is a predominantly Congolese Tutsi rebel group that was dormant for years.\n<\/p>\n
\n It took up arms again in November last year and seized the town of Bunagana on the border with Uganda in June.\n<\/p>\n
\n After a brief period of calm, it went on the offensive again in October, greatly extending the territory under its control and advancing towards Goma.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kinshasa accuses its smaller neighbour Rwanda of providing M23 with support, something that UN experts and US officials have also pointed to in recent months.\n<\/p>\n
\n Kigali disputes the charge, and in turn accuses Kinshasa of collusion with the FDLR -- a former Rwandan Hutu rebel group established in the DRC after the genocide of the Tutsi community in 1994 in Rwanda.\n<\/p>\n
\n Talks between the two countries in the Angolan capital Luanda unlocked a truce agreement on November 23.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ceasefire was scheduled to take effect on November 25. It should also have been followed by a pullout by the M23 two days later from territory it had seized, but this did not happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UN's peacekeeping mission in DR Congo led calls Friday for an investigation after the government said 50 villagers had been massacred by a notorious armed group in the country's troubled east. On Thursday, the government accused the M23 militia -- with whom it is locked in a months-long conflict -- of slaughtering 50 people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-109771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n