UN prepares to vote on DRC as bodies of missing officials found
Two foreign UN experts who were kidnapped in the DRC have been found dead, one of them decapitated, the government said on Tuesday, as spiralling violence in the vast country sparked international condemnation. The bodies of the two — American Michael Sharp and Swedish national Zahida Catalan — were found as the UN Security Council prepares to vote on Wednesday on extending its peacekeeping mission in the country. "The provincial police commissioner has just returned from the area where the bodies of two UN researchers were found," government spokesman Lambert Mende said. The two were kidnapped by unidentified assailants on March 12 along with four Congolese accompanying them in Kasai-Central province. Mende said the woman’s body had been decapitated. The remote region has been plagued by violence since mid-August, when government forces killed Kamwina Nsapu, a chief and militia leader who had rebelled against President Joseph Kabila’s central government. The violence has spilled ov...
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