U.N. rights chief sees possible war crimes in Congo

A woman whose face was cut with a machete undergoes treatment in Minova hospital, 50km (30 miles) west of the provincial capital Goma, December 11, 2007.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A top United Nations official on Tuesday decried possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where U.N. investigators cited both government and rebel fighters for abuses.

Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, raised particular concern about transgressions by the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) militia, whose former leader Laurent Nkunda was arrested in January in Rwanda.

"The actions of the CNDP could well amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, and are part of a self-perpetuating pattern of brutality in eastern DRC which continues to go largely unpunished," Pillay, a South African former war crimes judge, said in a statement alongside two U.N. reports on Congo.

Those reports, produced by the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo and Pillay's office in Geneva, document violations that occurred during a spike in fighting in North and South Kivu, in October and November last year.

They find that some Congolese forces "engaged in large-scale pillages as well as arbitrary killings and sexual violence against the very people they were supposed to be protecting" as the CNDP militia approached eastern Congo towns.

The U.N. investigators documented 12 arbitrary killings and 70 rapes said to be committed by government soldiers in Goma and Kanyabayonga. They also found CNDP rebels carried out at least 67 civilian killings, with many victims "arbitrary executed, often inside their houses, after fighting had stopped."

In her statement, Pillay said that the judicial response to the abuses had been "wholly insufficient" and called for "concrete and immediate action to hold perpetrators accountable, particularly since sexual violence continues to take place on a daily basis."

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis)