Bogoro attack
| Bogoro attack | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Ituri conflict | |
| Location | Bogoro, DRC |
| Coordinates | 1°24′30″N 30°16′48″E / 1.4084°N 30.2800°E |
| Date | 24 February 2003 |
| Deaths | At least 200 |
| Perpetrators | FNI, FRPI |
The assault on Bogoro, which occurred on February 24, 2003, was an attack on the village of Bogoro in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) and the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FRPI). The attackers allegedly went on an "indiscriminate killing spree", killing at least 200 civilians, imprisoning survivors in a room filled with corpses, and sexually enslaving women and girls. Two rebel leaders, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, have been charged by the International Criminal Court with war crimes and crimes against humanity over their alleged role in planning the attack.
Bogoro is a village in Ituri Province, in the north-east of the DRC. Between 1999 and 2003, Ituri was the scene of a violent conflict between the Lendu, Ngiti and Hema ethnic groups. The Hema-dominated Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) seized control of Bunia, the district capital, in August 2002.
Bogoro was a strategically important town on the road between Bunia and the border with Uganda, with a UPC military camp in the middle of the town. The attack aimed to drive the UPC from Bogoro, but it also appeared to be a "reprisal operation against the Hema civilian population". It was part of a plan by Lendu and Ngiti rebels to attack predominantly Hema villages in preparation for an assault on Bunia.
On 24 February 2003, hundreds of FNI and FRPI fighters — including children under the age of fifteen — attacked Bogoro with machetes, spears, arrows, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers and semi-automatic weapons. According to the ICC, they circled the village and "converged towards the centre on a killing spree", killing at least 200 civilians, imprisoning survivors in a room filled with corpses, and sexually enslaving women and girls. Some residents of the village were killed by setting their houses on fire, others were hacked to death with machetes. The UN reported that 173 of the victims were under the age of 18.
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