Troops killed seven hippopotamuses, four elephants and six monkeys, including two chimpanzees, last month in a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an environmental group said on Monday.
The local group, Innovation for the Development and Protection of the Environment (IDPE), said that the killings took place in the Virunga National Park between February 7 and 25.
The IDPE accused "soldiers of the 15th and 18th Brigades of the FARDC" (the DRC army) of poaching and said they were acting "under orders from officers" who also charged a fee to local poachers, charcoal burners and fishermen in a protection racket.
The IDPE has proposed a "demilitarisation of the park", after denouncing previous killings of protected species in 2009.
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But the Virunga Park, on the north-eastern border with Uganda, is a base not only to army units but to warring militia groups and rebel forces, all of whom kill animals for food and chop down trees to make fire.
The park includes Lake Edward, which in 1980 had the world's biggest population of hippos, numbering about 27 000. Today, there are fewer than 300, according to the director of the park, Emmanuel de Merode.
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In September 2009, a FARDC corporal was killed by a hippopotamus while on a clandestine fishing trip.
Set up in 1925, the Virunga National Park is classed as a World Heritage Site by Unesco and it is the oldest game reserve in Africa. It is home notably to 200 mountain gorillas and a small population of plains gorillas, a species strongly faced with the threat of extinction.
-SAPA
