By MICHELLE FAUL
Associated Press Writer
updated 2:41 a.m. PT,  May 5, 2010

NIANGARA, Congo - The young woman with the hacked-off lips and stitches
where one ear used to be shakes her head when asked why rebels did this
to her, then whispers that the attackers who came from across the river
were angry because she kept crying for mercy and calling on God for help.

Cornelia Yekpalile, a 23-year-old mother of four children, was mutilated
18 days ago when she went to the fields near her village of Kpizimbi,
set in dense forest in northeast Congo, to collect spinach-like pondu
leaves to cook for lunch.

It's an area so difficult to reach that U.N. officials on Saturday
announced a previously unreported massacre that occurred two months ago:
up to 100 people were killed when the rebel Lord's Resistance Army
attacked a village.

U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said he learned of the killings on
Saturday when he visited Niangara, the nearest town which he reached by
helicopter, and met with local officials and victims who escaped. U.N.
investigators said they have spoken with witnesses but so far have been
unable to reach the remote scene in the Haut-Uele district of Congo's
Oriental province.

It comes two months after one of the worst massacres recently committed
by the LRA, the killings of more than 300 civilians in the area in the
second week of December. Rebels also kidnapped more than 250 people
including 80 children, according to the U.N.

"In this district, the Lord's Resistance Army has continued to commit
horrific atrocities against civilians, who are now displaced with no
prospect of going back home any time soon", Holmes said Saturday, on the
third day of a four-day tour from his New York headquarters.

The latest attacks highlight the need for the continued presence in
Congo of the U.N. military mission, Holmes said. Congo's government
wants MONUC --- the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission with some 20,000
troops --- to leave before September 2011.

"We are worried by the prospect of a premature withdrawal because MONUC
is very important to our humanitarian activities," Holmes said in an
interview with The Associated Press on Saturday. "If you withdraw that
element of stability that is MONUC then other conflicts contained by the
presence of MONUC may get out of control and you could find yourself in
a much more dangerous situation."

Earlier, Holmes visited eastern Congo, where Rwandan rebels who helped
perpetrate their countries 1994 genocide and fled across the border
continue to attack civilians, killing, burning homes and driving some
1.4 million from their homes.

Villages in eastern Congo are routinely looted and burned by the Rwandan
rebels and a host of tribal militiamen as well as ordinary armed criminals.

Sexual violence has become a weapon of war and the U.N. reports at least
8,300 rapes were committed against women in eastern Congo last year,
averaging 160 rapes a week.

When Holmes visited the village of Mwenga on Friday, he was met by women
singing a poignant song. "We are the living dead. They rape us! There's
no life without women. There can be no Congo without women," they sang.
Tears ran down the faces of some of the chanting women.

On Sunday, Holmes visits Mbandaka in northwest Congo, where a new
rebellion has erupted. Enyele militiamen this month attacked U.N.
peacekeepers guarding the airport, killing a Ghanaian peacekeeper and a
South African pilot along with some 20 civilians.

That rebellion, in Equateur province, began between tribesmen fighting
over farming and fishing rights. But the Enyele militiamen, in an Easter
Sunday attack, targeted strategic and government locations. It took
Congolese troops and U.N. peacekeepers two days' fighting to retake the
airport.

The U.N. peacekeepers "provide stability, they provide security for
humanitarians (workers) they provide protection for civilians," Holmes said.

But the U.N. forces are stretched thinly across this vast Central
African nation the size of Western Europe and challenged logistically in
a country that has few paved roads and is covered by near-impenetrable
forest where fighters take refuge.

At Niangara Hospital, where she is being cared for by Doctors Without
Borders from Belgium, Yekpalile said she would not be going home when
her wounds mend.

"There's no security in the villages," she said. "Here there are soldiers."

She said she had no idea why the rebels hacked off her lips and her
right ear. "I was crying for mercy and crying 'Oh my God, oh my God,
help me.' They said they would kill me if I carried on making a noise
and then they did this," she said, pressing a bandage to a mouth covered
in plaster.

Mattia Novella, field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said they
see few wounded patients. "As I understand it, they do not wound, they
kill, that's why we don't received many injured people."

The LRA launched its attacks in northern Uganda more than 20 years ago,
saying its aim was to uphold the 10 commandments. Uganda's army drove
out but did not defeat the rebels, who crossed the border and also have
attacked villagers in neighboring Sudan and Central African Republic.

The Ugandan rebels have no known agenda except killing and kidnapping
mainly children to swell their ranks. Leader Joseph Kony has several
times agreed to surrender and then reneged, apparently fearing trial at
the International Court in The Hague, where he is wanted for crimes
against humanity.

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