Fresh fighting in eastern DR Congo - Civilians 'executed'

Fresh fighting in eastern DR Congo  http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/11/2008119123045970527.html
(03:00 GMT)" in the town of Ngungu, about 60km west of Goma, he said. "Thousands of people are arriving at the Monuc base at Ngungu" to take shelter from the fighting, he said. Kgalema Motlanthe, the South African president, on Sunday called for a ceasefire between Congolese government forces and fighters from the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). "We call for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian assistance to the displaced people," he said at the start of a Southern African Development Community (Sadc) summit. "We firmly believe that there is no military solution to the problem." Hundreds of people are believed to have been killed in fighting between government forces and the CNDP, led by Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general. More than a quarter of a million people have been displaced, the UN says.
Civilians 'executed'
On Saturday, the UN said it had evidence that CNDP fighters and pro-government militias have killed civilians in the region.Alan Doss, the senior UN envoy in DR Congo, said that "war crimes that we cannot tolerate" were committed in the village of Kiwanja, near Goma."We condemn them, we deplore them, and we remind the different groups involved that international law is very clear on this," he said. UN officials said that local fighters, known as Mai Mai, first attacked the villagers on Tuesday. Fighters from the CNDP then won control of the village and killed those who they thought supported the Mai Mai.The UN mission said on Friday its investigators had "visited 11 communal grave sites, containing at least 26 bodies, fighters and civilians".ExecutionsAnneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, and Dietrich said it appeared the rebels had committed many more killings than the militia.Some residents told the Associated Press news agency that many victims were shot in the head, while others said the rebels dressed the dead in military uniforms.The killings highlighted the inability of UN peacekeepers to protect civilians.Monuc has a base in Kiwanja, but it has only 120 soldiers to protect up to 50,000 people.Civilians are bearing the brunt of affects of the fighting [AFP]"We have tried our utmost to portect civilians wherever we can," Doss told Al Jazeera."Please remember that this is a huge area. There are 10 million people in Kivu and we have less than 10,000 peacekeepers."In many places we are the only presence there to protect people. The situation would have been infinitely worse had we not been there. "It is not the UN that is the root cause of these problems