KAMPALA (Reuters) - Nearly 400 people
were killed by mobs in a witch hunt last month in northeastern Congo and
nearly 300 fled to escape the bloodshed, a Ugandan military intelligence
officer said on Wednesday.
''The latest report we have received
is that 394 people have been killed and 283 displaced although 40 have
returned to their villages,'' Captain Alfred Opio told Reuters.
Earlier a Ugandan army commander, Brigadier Henry Tumukunde, confirmed a report last week in Uganda's New Vision newspaper that 244 people had been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Aru district by people who suspected them of practicing witchcraft.
The paper said the Ugandan army, which controls most of northeastern Congo, had arrested 89 people in connection with the witch-hunt, while 140 survivors of the mid-June killings had taken shelter with the army, many with machete wounds.
Opio, speaking by telephone from northwestern Uganda, said the governor of Congo's Ituri region, Bule Ebaglolo Basheba, was traveling around northeast Congo to restore calm and order.
''He is trying to talk to the people and has come with Congolese magistrates from Bunia (town) to Aru to try and speed the trials of the killers,'' Opio said.
''But right now it has calmed down, as far as we know.''
Traditional beliefs and witchcraft are common in Congo, but the paper did not say clearly what had instigated the violence.
Opio said one of the first victims appeared to have been a teacher who had been discovered in possession of a list of names of people who had recently died.
A reporter who recently visited the area said hearsay had fueled local suspicions about a feared upsurge in witchcraft.
''The village chief would blow a horn for an assembly. If you did not turn up they would find you and lynch you,'' said the reporter, who declined to be identified. ''Otherwise they would beat a confession out of their victims and he would name his accomplices in the village or in neighboring villages.''
Killers used clubs, machetes, sticks or stones.
''Sometimes they would bury up to five or six of them in one grave ... afterwards they would divide the victim's property, slaughter his livestock, roast it and wash it down with the local beer before they moved on.''
The Ugandan army invaded northern Congo in 1998, saying Uganda's security was under threat, and still maintains a strong presence in the northeast in support of a rebel movement opposed to the government in Kinshasa.