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Six aid workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross, including two foreign nationals, have been attacked and killed in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the ICRC said.
The six - four Congolese staff, a Swiss nurse and a Colombian - were shot on Thursday and their bodies hacked with machetes, Bony Mpaka, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the town of Bunia, said.
ICRC spokesman Michael Kleiner in Nairobi said the attack occurred some 30 km north of Bunia close to the Ugandan border.
"We are not 100 percent sure of the circumstances that surround the events but we know that six of our colleagues have been killed," said Kleiner. "This is a great shock to all of us."
The dead who had been on a routine mission to hand out aid were identified as Rita Fox, 36, a Swiss nurse, Julio Delgado, 54, a Colombian relief worker and four Congolese ICRC employees, Veronique Saro and Unen Ufoirworth and drivers Jean Molokabonge and Aduwe Boboli.
Mpaka said the two vehicles of the six had been burnt. He added that aid workers would not venture outside Bunia for the time being.
"All humanitarian operations in the area have been suspended," Mpaka said. "I think it is natural before we know what happened, why and by whom."
Fighting between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups have left thousands of people dead in the area in the last two years, with many of the victims hacked to death with machetes or killed with spears in a conflict over land and natural resources.
However the area has been relatively quiet since the Ugandan-backed Congo Liberation Front (CLF) rebels convinced local chiefs to sign a peace agreement earlier this year.
Congo envoy blames Uganda
In New York, Congo's UN envoy Atoki Ileka said his government believed the aid workers "more than likely were murdered by the elements of the Ugandan Army who discovered the bodies."
"This shocking tragedy took place in a zone under the effective control of Uganda, which is the principal source of arms in the region," Ileka said in a letter to British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, this month's UN Security Council president.
ICRC said the incident, the first fatal attack on ICRC staff in Africa for several years, would inevitably force the relief organisation to review its operations in the area.
"It's much too early to say what consequences this event will have on ICRC operations in the region, which are of course on standby," Kleiner said.
"Obviously those who will suffer are as usual the civilians, who are the most affected, who are in need of humanitarian assistance and who will not be receiving it from us for now for a certain period."
In Washington, the State Department said in a statement that the United States was shocked and saddened by the deaths.
"The US strongly condemns this attack and urges that its perpetrators be brought to justice," it said.
"The United States remains gravely concerned about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and calls on all parties to respect international humanitarian law, abide by the Lusaka agreement and seek an end to the conflict," it added.
ICRC said that the victims, part of the ICRC's delegation in Bunia, had been on a routine trip to distribute medical aid in an area they knew well.
ICRC officials said the six bodies were found by officers of the Ugandan army which is backing the CLF rebels in the northern part of the vast, mineral-rich country.
More than two million people have fled their homes and hundreds of thousands more have died as a result of the war in the Congo, which has sucked in half a dozen foreign armies.
The conflict pits the Congo government, supported by forces from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, against rival rebel factions who control large swathes of the north and east with the help of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
The deaths were the first ICRC fatalities in Africa since five aid workers were killed in Burundi in 1996.
© Reuters
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