Troops held over DR Congo mass rape

Seven soldiers and a commander in the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been arrested over allegations that they were involved in a mass rape, according to the United Nations. Fifty women have told the UN that they were raped in the eastern town of Fizi on the night of January 1 this year. Madnodge Mounoubai, a spokesman for MONUSCO, the UN mission in DRC, said the atrocities had been committed after a drunken soldier got into a dispute. "A soldier in a bar got somehow drunk and he fired and shot at a civilian," he told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. "He [the civilian] was taken to the hospital. The people thought that he was dead, so they turned against this soldier and actually they killed him. "After he got killed, his colleagues heard that he was killed and they came and went on a rampage in the village. They started to loot the village, to loot the stores and to rape the women." A spokesperson for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Southern Kivu said the women had been restrained by ropes or beaten with rifle butts before being attacked - some of them in front of their children. Lieutenant Colonel Kibibi Mutware has been identified by some victims and witnesses as the commander of the soldiers who allegedly committed the mass rape.