Newly arrived UN peacekeepers in the north-eastern Congolese town of Bunia werer met with harsh criticism from locals today for failing to stop hundreds of looters from ransacking shops.
UN soldiers formally took over responsibility this week for security in Bunia, replacing a French-led European force whose mandate to protect residents from fighting between rival ethnic militia ran out on Monday.
Some 1,200 Bangladeshi troops have already arrived, and the total number of U.N. troops is to rise to about 5,000 - almost four times as many as deployed under the European force - with troops from Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia and Uruguay.
In the violence late on Friday, several kiosks belonging to traders were looted by a mob of about 500 people, who had demonstrated earlier against unemployment.
Witnesses said Uruguayan and Bangladeshi troops arrived in armed personnel vehicles but did not intervene or attempt to disperse the crowd.
"We ran to the airport for safety but were refused entry. We pointed out the attackers to the U.N. troops, but they did nothing," said Mr Kasoho Buheke, a victim of the looting.
"The UN promised to secure the town but they are not doing the job," said local priest Fr Bunu Bapu.
UN spokesman Mr Leocadio Salmeron defended the troops: "The UN are not the police, they are military. The looters were not armed and imminently dangerous, so we could not open fire."
The UN force has a new mandate which allows it to pursue attackers and use firepower to quell the marauding militia, who still kill, loot and rape.
Fighting between Hema and Lendu tribal fighters and militia attacks on civilians have killed 50,000 people in Bunia and the surrounding mineral-rich Ituri region since 1999 and forced over half a million people to flee their homes.
The clashes in Ituri have overshadowed the formation of Congo's transitional government, meant to officially end a civil war that has killed around three million people since 1998.