DAKAR (AlertNet) - The United Nations must cease all support for the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch has said, after the U.N. announced it would cut operational assistance to certain Congolese army units that it believes killed 62 civilians.

But a local Congolese women's rights group has warned that a complete withdrawal of U.N. support for President Joseph Kabila's forces would lead to more atrocities against civilians by soldiers and by Rwandan rebels they are fighting.

The Congolese army has killed hundreds of civilians and carried out widespread rape in its offensive against a Rwandan Hutu militia group in the east of the country, an area that faces huge humanitarian problems, according to Human Rights Watch.

On Monday, the U.N. said its peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) would immediately suspend logistical and operational support for army units implicated in the killing of 62 civilians around the village of Lukweti, about 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, between May and September.

"Peacekeeping officials knew that war crimes were being committed by Congolese government forces, yet eight months into operation Kimia II, they are only now suspending the U.N.'s support to one of the army units responsible," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in London, in a statement released in response to the U.N. announcement.

Kimia II is the Congolese government's military operation in eastern Congo.

MONUC provides substantial operational and logistics support including military firepower, transport, rations, and fuel to the Congolese army in its effort to forcefully disarm the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is operating in the east of the country.

According to Human Rights Watch, continued willingness to provide support for abusive military operations in which soldiers are committing war crimes against the people they are called to protect implicates the U.N. in violations of the laws of war.

The organisation also reported that between late January and September, the Rwandan militia group deliberately killed at least 630 civilians, many in areas on the border between North and South Kivu provinces in the east of Congo. But it said war crimes committed by the militia did not justify killings and widespread rape by the Congolese forces.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

About 900,000 people have been displaced, 1,000 civilians killed and over 7,000 women and girls raped in eastern Congo since January when the Congolese army embarked on a campaign against the Rwandan militia in the area.

Immaculée Birhaheka of Congolese women's rights' group Promotion et Appui aux Initiatives Féminines called the humanitarian situation "catastrophic".

"Those who were displaced have not gone back to their homes and are scattered in farmlands begging, with no access to healthcare and food," she told AlertNet by telephone. "It is really complicated."

However, Birhaheka warned that a complete withdrawal of MONUC's presence around the Congolese army would lead to more atrocities against civilians by both the army and the militia.

"Those who committed such acts have to be tried and their superiors have to be accountable for the acts of their subordinates, given that these are known brigades, in order to put an end to impunity," Birhaheka said.

"If the first authors of such crimes had been punished and new troops had seen what had happened to them, they would not repeat such acts or at least not on the scale of Lukweti," she said.

The eastern provinces of Congo have been in conflict since 1998.

The country has lost 5.4 million people to conflict and the deadly disease and hunger that it has unleashed - equivalent to the entire population of Denmark. Even before the latest upsurge of violence, over a million people were homeless in North and South Kivu provinces. On average around 1,100 women a month reported being raped last year, according to Oxfam.

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