« on: February 01, 2025, 03:45:32 pm »
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d591ldq46oIt has been a humiliating week for nearly 300 Romanian mercenaries recruited to fight on the side of the army in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Their surrender following a rebel assault on the eastern city of Goma has also shattered the dreams of those who signed up for the job to earn big money.
The BBC has seen contracts that show that these hired soldiers were being paid around $5,000 (£4,000) a month, while regular military recruits get around $100, or sometimes go unpaid.
The Romanians were contracted to help the army fight the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, who say they are fighting to protect the rights of DR Congo's minority ethnic Tutsis.
When the offensive on Goma started on Sunday night, the Romanians were forced to take refuge at a UN peacekeeping base.
"The M23 rebels were supported by troops and state-of-the-art military equipment from Rwanda and managed to reach our positions around the city of Goma," Constantin Timofti, described as a coordinator for the group, told Romanian TVR channel on Monday.
"The national army gave up fighting and we were forced to withdraw."
Romania's foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Țărnea told the BBC that "complex" negotiations followed, which saw the M23 hand over the Romanian fighters - whom he described as private employees of the DR Congo government on an army training mission - to Rwanda.
EXCERPT
Those Romanian mercs were lucky to get out alive! Captured mercs generally meet very bad ends.

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