DR Congo militiamen on trial at war crimes court

Two Congolese militiamen accused of seeking to wipe out a village blocking a strategic route in an ethnic war went on trial on warcrimes charges in the International Criminal Court on Tuesday.

The trial of Germain Katanga, 31, and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, 39, only the court's second trial and its first for murder, opened in The Hague at 0830 GMT.

The duo stand accused over an attack by their forces on the village of Bogoro in Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri region that killed 200 people in February 2003.

They face 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including charges of murder, rape, sexual slavery, using child soldiers, attacking civilians, pillaging and destruction of property.

The prosecution says more than 1,000 fighters of Katanga's Patriotic Resistance Force (FRPI) and Ngudjolo's Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) entered Bogoro on February 24 six years ago "with one communicated and agreed goal: to erase the village".

Until the attack, the village had been controlled by rival Thomas Lubanga's Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), blocking FRPI and FNI fighters and camps from the road to the key city of Bunia.

Katanga and Ngudjolo are both of Lendu ethnicity, while the Bogoro inhabitants were mostly Hema. Lubanga's own war crimes trial, the ICC's first, started in January.

Non-governmental bodies claim that inter-ethnic and militia violence in Ituri is about control of the area's gold mines, and has claimed 60,000 lives since 1999.