The Security Council demanded on Thursday that all steps be taken to prevent a repeat of a recent mass rape in Congo as council members voiced open dissatisfaction at the late response of U.N. forces. U.N. peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have said they were only informed of the incident more than a week after it happened, even though they had a base just 20 miles (30 km) from the scene in the country's violent east, according to Reuters. That led council members to suggest, at an unscheduled meeting called by the United States and France, that the 20,000-strong MONUSCO peacekeeping force needed at least to improve its communications with the local population. Rebels from the Mai Mai militia and Rwandan Hutu FDLR occupied the town of Luvungi in North Kivu province from July 30 to Aug. 3, raping and assaulting at least 154 civilians, according to U.N. figures. One aid group has said many women were gang-raped by between two and six armed men. The attack has stung the United Nations, whose peacekeeping force in Congo is its largest anywhere. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made protecting civilians and combating sexual violence central themes of his stewardship of the world body. A Security Council statement "demanded that all possible steps should be taken to prevent such outrages in the future" and called on Congo to bring the culprits to justice. It welcomed Ban's despatch of a senior aide, deputy peacekeeping chief Atul Khare, to Congo, but made clear it expected to hear "what more could be done to ensure more effective protection of civilians." Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, this month's council president, said that when Khare returned to New York on Sept. 8 the 15-nation body wanted "a very serious, sober evaluation ... of what happened and why."
