DR CONGO: In Bunia the price of safety is impossibly high. Two nights ago drunken soldiers burst into a local aid worker's house, demanding $1,000 from each of the five people inside. Declan Walsh in Bunia
When they refused, the four men were pinned to the floor and thrashed with rifle butts. The girl - the man's 16-year-old niece who had fled other horrors to be with him - was shoved into another room and repeatedly raped.
"It was unbearable, because I could do nothing," said the man, who works in the UN hospital, from a safe house yesterday.
With his arm in a makeshift sling, he requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. "They could come and finish the job," he said.
Ituri district in north-eastern Congo is awash with brutality, intimidation and abuse. Last month over 430 civilians were butchered in ethnic massacres during the battle for Bunia, where a French-led contingent of 1,400 peacekeepers is due to deploy this week. Stray dogs ate some bodies; others were apparently cannibalised.
These days Bunia's half-empty streets are rife with looting, rape and extortion. The culprits are the gunmen who carried out last month's killing. At least 60 per cent of them are children, according to UN estimates.
Recently local aid workers have seemed to be targeted, probably for their hard-currency pay packets. This week a Red Cross worker and two local UN staff were also attacked. Earlier, four other Red Cross workers were murdered.
The 700 Uruguayan troops stationed in Bunia do not intervene to prevent attacks. Despairing locals pray that the French-led force, possibly led by the Foreign Legion and with orders to shoot, will bring security back.
Wrapping a fresh bandage on a teenage girl's machete wound, a nurse, Mr Damien Rukwiza, said: "We are waiting for them impatiently. Can't you call them so they come now?"
Bad as they are, Bunia's abuses probably pale compared to what is happening outside. Earlier this week UN helicopters overflew at least three burning villages. Fearful for their lives, UN troops and aid workers dare not venture beyond the outskirts of the enclave town.
"I am afraid to think of what is happening outside Bunia," said Ms Sonia Bakar, a senior UN human rights investigator.
Yesterday a Hema group claimed that Lendu fighters massacred 350 civilians in the nearby lakeside town of Tchomia, following a weekend military clash.
A UN official in neighbouring Uganda said the unconfirmed toll should not be trusted. He said: "Congo has a history of manipulation. Everyone exaggerates the figures; it's part of the game. They know how difficult it is for us to investigate."
Last month two UN military observers were brutally tortured and murdered at a remote gold mining centre, provoking an almost complete withdrawal from Ituri.
Many believe the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), the ruthless Hema militia controlling Bunia, must disarm to bring peace. But at a press conference in Bunia's only functioning restaurant yesterday, the UPC leader, Mr Thomas Lubanga, defiantly refused to lay down arms.
He said: "If necessary my forces will return to base to help the multinational force. But we will not allow them to disarm us." In the town, fear of Lendu attack in advance of the UN deployment is growing, but business is crawling back to life.
A butcher's shop beside a mass gravesite was, perhaps insensitively, named "Butchers without Borders". More appropriately, on the main street the Café de la Paix was boarded up after being looted. The owner, an elderly Belgian called Kless, fled weeks ago, the men lounging on the steps explained. "He came here in 1975," one said. "But I have no idea when he's coming back."
The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, has said he favoured Ireland making a contribution to the Congo exercise but a request would first have to be made to the Government by the UN.