Anger: Anti-UN demonstrators in Goma on Tuesday
Soldiers and police officers were deployed across eastern DR Congo towns Wednesday after days of deadly anti-UN protests that have claimed at least 19 lives in the volatile region.
Calm appeared to have returned to several towns in North Kivu province, according to AFP reporters, after unrest broke out in the provincial capital Goma on Monday and quickly spread.
Crowds had stormed a United Nations peacekeeping base and a supply centre in the city of Goma in North Kivu on Monday, looting valuables and chanting hostile slogans.
Three UN peacekeepers were then killed on Tuesday after protests spread, in an attack on their base in the town of Butembo.
Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said during a televised Global News conference on Tuesday night that 12 protesters in total had been killed during the unrest, in addition to the peacekeepers.
“In no case is violence justified,” he said.
The UN mission in DRC, known as MONUSCO, has come under regular criticism in the troubled east, where many accuse it of failing to stop decades-old armed conflict.