Free Republic

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- The U.N. said Monday it had launched a military operation to rescue foreign diplomats inside the besieged home of a Congo presidential candidate.

UPDATE 2-At least 8 UN soldiers killed in Congo-UN sources (recasts with death toll) KINSHASA, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Militiamen killed at least eight United Nations peacekeepers in an attack on a patrol in eastern Congo on Friday, U.N. sources in the country said. "There are at least eight dead and some still missing," one U.N. source told Reuters. A second U.N. source confirmed the death toll. Kemal Saiki, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the attack took place on Friday morning in the mineral-rich Ituri district, where the U.N. has deployed 4,800...

BUNIA, Congo - For six days, two terrified United Nations military observers phoned their superiors - as many as four times a day - begging to be evacuated from their remote outpost in northeastern Congo. They were receiving death threats, they said. They were alone and unarmed in Mongbwalu, a former gold-mining town ruled by the cannibalistic Lendu tribal militias. A U.N. helicopter from the town of Bunia could have retrieved them in 35 minutes. But the United Nations, handcuffed by its own rules and bureaucracy, never sent a chopper. On May 18, 10 days after the two peacekeepers...