Feb 07, 2009 02:09
The American military helped plan and pay for a recent attack on a notorious Ugandan rebel group, but the offensive went awry, scattering fighters who carried out a wave of massacres as they fled, killing as many as 900 civilians.
The rebel leaders escaped, breaking their fighters into small groups that continue to ransack town after town in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting and clubbing to death anyone in their way.
The troops did not seal off the rebels' escape routes or deploy soldiers to many of the nearby towns where the rebels slaughtered people in churches and tried to twist off the heads of toddlers.