248 women say they were raped in DR Congo in June

A total of 248 women have reported being raped by soldiers last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern Sud-Kivu province, figures from local medical sources Monday showed. A doctor at Nakiele hospital told AFP that 121 local women reported they had been raped in the night of June 11 to 12, as confirmed by the United Nations last Friday. A male nurse in another locality, Abala, added that 55 women said they were raped in the night of June 10 to 11, while another said 72 women in the village of Kanguli reported having been violated that same night. Kanguli and Abala are respectively five and seven kilometres away from Nakiele, in the Fizi area of Sud-Kivu. The Nakiele village chief, Losema Etamo Ngoma, told AFP that the rapes and looting were committed by at least 150 armed men under the command of national army Colonel Nyiragire Kulimushi, alias "Kifaru." Kulimushi, who ran away from a military base south of Nakiele on June 8, was accused of being the culprit by a Sud-Kivu lawmaker shortly after the attacks. Kulimushi is a former member of the Mai Mai tribal militia which integrated into the national army. On June 25, government spokesman Lambert Mende said government forces were "actively" looking for Kulimushi, and that a special tribunal would be set up to evaluate the case. Margot Wallstrom, the UN's special representative on combating sexual violence in conflict, has in the past called DR Congo the "rape capital" of the world.