GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Eight metal coffins draped in blue U.N. flags arrived in Guatemala on Saturday, carrying the bodies of troops killed in Congo in an operation that raised questions about peacekeeping operations.
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The "Kaibil" special forces troops died on Monday in a clash with rebels from neighboring Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, while on a reconnaissance mission in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. At least 15 LRA fighters died.
Long accused of standing by while violence raged in Congo, the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission has stepped up operations against a plethora of Congolese, Ugandan and Rwandan rebel groups in the east during the last year.
Guatemala has demanded an investigation into the incident, in which five Kaibils were also wounded, in the Garamba National Park on the border with Sudan.
Sergio Morales, Guatemala's human rights ombudsman, said on Wednesday the Guatemalan troops were "doing the dirty work" of the United Nations.
U.N. officials who accompanied the bodies back to the Central American country met Guatemalan President Oscar Berger and military officials after a funeral with full honors at the country's main military air base.
Relatives of the fallen soldiers, many from the poor jungle region of Peten, attended the ceremony and were to return with the bodies to bury them in family plots.
The loss of Guatemalan troops was the second deadliest in the history of the U.N. mission in Congo. Nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers were killed in a rebel ambush in the Ituri district in February 2005.
The Kaibil force was created to fight leftist insurgents during Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended in 1996.
A 1999 U.N.-backed truth commission blamed the Kaibils for some of the most brutal human rights violations during the military's scorched-earth campaign that claimed some 200,000 lives, the majority of them Maya Indian peasants.
