They pressed against the windows to witness the long-awaited arrival.”A three-month [deployment] is not enough,” said Johanes Jalwiny, who had been camping in the building with his family for a month “And they should not just stay in Bunia. Worse things are happening in the countryside.”The UN mission to Congo has been sharply criticised because 700 Uruguayan troops already stationed in Bunia failed to halt last month’s massacres.Their French commander, Colonel Daniel Vollot, who punched a cameraman who failed to obey an order to move back yesterday morning, defended their record “The conditions were extreme,” he said. “We were not prepared to fight.”In contrast, the new force will have orders to open fire if needed to halt any fresh wave of violence. France is contributing half of 1,400 troops, and the remainder will come from Britain, Germany, Belgium and other European nations Canada and South Africa are also contributing troops The mission will end on 1 September. The UN Security Council approved the deployment, which will be backed by fighter jets based in the region.The wider conflict in the DRC, now slowly subsiding, began in 1998, sucking in five other African nations when Rwanda and Uganda invaded to help rebels fight the government. Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia intervened on the government’s side.An estimated 3 million people have died since 1998, mostly through disease and starvation caused by the conflict.

With Bunia surrounded by warring ethnic militias, the UN mission will be a perilous one. But the film showing at the local video theatre did not bode well. Hundreds of youngsters sat transfixed before Terminal Mission, a violent Vietnam-era movie.Loud cheers burst out as a soldier torched a straw hut and a burning man ran out. “We are definitely welcoming the French,” shouted the theatre owner “But this, I can’t explain.”.

Military helicopters circled over Harare’s skies and ruling-party militiamen flooded into the city, taking up positions alongside soldiers and paramilitary police. The general strike succeeded in shutting down Zimbabwe’s already collapsing economy. At least two protesters were killed and hundreds wounded.Faced yesterday with the unmistakable signs of a peaceful revolution in the making, the 79-year-old President tried to crush it by deploying the biggest police, military and paramilitary operation since independence in 1980.The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had called on Zimbabweans to gather “in their millions” at designated centres around the country and to march peacefully. Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, was arrested for the second time in a week and charged with treason.And, in an unprecedented act of repression, Mr Mugabe deployed more than 2,000 armed ruling-party henchmen around the capital to intimidate opponents and quash the risk of a “Yugoslavia-style” overthrow The young thugs, known as “green bombers”, are notorious. Trained in military-style camps run by the ruling party, they are accused of some of the most heinous human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Scores of opponents of the regime have been raped and tortured at their camps.The presence of the militias in the streets of the capital yesterday helped to keep most protesters at home. But the scale of the security operation also exposed Mr Mugabe as a tyrant who is now clinging to power by force.