Six aid workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross, including two foreign nationals, have been attacked and killed in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the ICRC said yesterday.
The six - four Congolese staff, a Swiss nurse and a Colombian - were shot on Thursday and their bodies hacked with machetes, Mr Bony Mpaka, head of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the town of Bunia, said.
ICRC spokesman Mr Michael Kleiner said in Nairobi the attack occurred some 30 km north of Bunia, close to the Ugandan border.
"We are not 100 per cent sure of the circumstances that surround the events but we know that six of our colleagues have been killed," said Mr Kleiner. The dead were identified as Ms Rita Fox (36), a Swiss nurse, Mr Julio Delgado (54), a Colombian relief worker, and four Congolese ICRC employees, Ms Veronique Saro and Mr Unen Ufoirworth and drivers Mr Jean Molokabonge and Mr Aduwe Boboli.
Mr Mpaka said that aid workers would not venture outside Bunia for the time being.
"All humanitarian operations in the area have been suspended," Mr Mpaka said.
Fighting between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups have left thousands of people dead in the area in the last two years, with many of the victims hacked to death with machetes or killed with spears in a conflict over land and natural resources.
In New York, Congo's UN envoy, Mr Atoki Ileka, said his government believed the aid workers "more than likely were murdered by the elements of the Ugandan army who discovered the bodies.
"This shocking tragedy took place in a zone under the effective control of Uganda, which is the principal source of arms in the region," Mr Ileka said in a letter to British ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, this month's UN Security Council president.
The ICRC said the incident, the first fatal attack on ICRC staff in Africa for several years, would inevitably force the relief organisation to review its operations in the area.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, called on the Ugandan authorities yesterday to bring to justice the killers of the six Red Cross workers.
In a statement through his spokesman, Mr Annan said he was "greatly distressed to learn of the brutal murders".