The Democratic Republic of Congo condemned as a "ridiculous montage" Saturday a video purporting to show a massacre of unarmed civilians by DR Congo soldiers. The seven-minute video, which appears to be taken by cellphone, was provided to AFP late Friday by a Congo specialist, who said it might have been filmed on February 11 or 12.
At the time, unconfirmed reports indicated that 50 to 100 people had been killed in clashes between government forces and supporters of a slain tribal chief in the Kasai-Central region in the south of the country. "What kind of army would let someone film while they kill?" said government spokesman Lambert Mende.
"This is the work of desperate people. It's clumsy and ridiculous. It's worthy of scenes from a Rambo movie," he said.
A spokesman for the UN mission for the stabilisation of the country, MONUSCO, could not be reached Saturday, but a source in the mission said it was investigating "the video and other claims" regarding operations in the Kasai regions.
An AFP analysis was unable to confirm when or where the video was made.
It shows a group of eight soldiers speaking Lingala, the language used by Congo's army, and Swahili, spoken in the east of the country.
The soldiers advance on a group of people a few dozen metres away who are singing "Our land, our land" in Tshiluba, a language of Kasai-Central.
"These bastards, they're coming to get killed", one can be heard saying, and then an order is shouted: "Advance! Shoot!"
The soldiers begin firing, without any attempt to find shelter: Nobody is seen shooting back.
The shooting stops, and the video shows the soldiers amid the bodies littering the ground. They fire at some to finish them off, starting with a woman.
"Here we are in the village of Mwanza-Lomba, we came across them today. We have shown them that power is the law," the person filming says.
"There are lots of them but we'll chase them to infinity, he said.
"Look at them, they're armed with slingshots, wear red scarves around their heads; they have grisgris on their belts," he says, referring to amulets associated with voodoo.
Mwanza-Lomba is in Kasai-Oriental, between Mbuji-Mayi, the capital of the state, and Kananga, the capital of Kasai-Central.
The region has been wracked by violence since a tribal chief, Kamwina Nsapu, was killed by government forces in mid-August.
More than two dozen people have been killed in the area since the start of the year, and the United Nations mission in the country has said it will send at least 100 peacekeepers to the Kasai-Central region.
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