UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The United Nations Security Council in New York held an emergency session Thursday to discuss and condemn widespread rapes in eastern Congo, while the U.S. ambassador to the UN said she was troubled by a briefing on the attacks.

“We are horrified, and we are outraged, and that led us, in conjunction with the French, to request this detailed briefing this morning,” said Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, on Thursday. “It was a disturbing briefing, both for what we learned and what we don't know still.”
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo was aware that Rwandan rebels were occupying villages in the region in late July and early August, but did not know of reports that the rebels were raping women in those villages, UN officials said this week.
Nearly 200 women were gang-raped by hundreds of Rwandan and Congolese rebels, humanitarian officials said.
Roger Meece, a representative for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said the United Nations was alerted to rebel activity in the area but was not notified of the mass rapes.
“There was no particular question of an attack, much less the kind of events like mass rape,” Meece said Wednesday.
But a senior United Nations official said Thursday that the UN was to blame for the incident and that the organization should leave the Congo if it could not protect civilians.
“We are guilty of a conspiracy of silence,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is a current member of the peacekeeping mission in Congo and is under orders not to criticize the UN publicly. “If we can't help civilians, there is no point in being here.”
“These things happen all the time. It may not be 180, it may be 10, but it happens all the time,” the official said. “Our colleagues are part of the problem--it's pretty bad.”
“They take it for granted, that people in Congo just have to suffer,” the official continued. “Some of the people in our hierarchy keep saying 'it's not going to change'... They just seem apathetic. It is very rare to meet anyone who wants to make a difference.”
The United Nations did not reply to requests for comment on allegations Thursday evening.
UN officials said that an e-mail warning of rebel activities was sent to UN and other staff working in the area.
Madnoje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo -- known by the acronym MONUSCO -- said the UN was first alerted to the rapes by humanitarian organizations on August 12.
The UN, which maintains a number of peacekeeping bases in the region, made its first public comments on the attacks Monday.
But the account of the delay was disputed by the International Medical Corps, a non-governmental organization that operates in the region. IMC spokeswoman Margaret Aguirre told CNN that her group informed the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs about the rapes on August 6, a day after IMC representatives had visited the affected villages.
Rice said that she and the French ambassador asked many questions about the situation on Thursday.
“I just want to take this opportunity to reiterate from the U.S. point of view our strongest possible condemnation of the rapes and attacks that occurred against scores of innocent civilians,” she said after the briefing.
Vitaly Churkin, of the Russian Federation and this month's Security Council president, said Thursday, “The members of the Security Council reiterated their demand that all parties with the armed conflict immediately cease completely all forms of sexual violence and all human rights abuses against the civilian population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including gender-based violence including rape and other forms of sexual abuse.”
According to humanitarian organizations, rebels raided a network of villages in North Kivu province between July 30 and August 3 and raped 179 women. Many of them were gang-raped individually by between two to six men.
A UN peacekeeper military base was within 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) of the general area of the attacks, in the town of Kibua.
“We had regular patrols in this area during that period,” Mounoubai told CNN by phone from Kinshasa Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, the villagers and the local authorities never brought this issue to our knowledge. If we are not informed, it will be difficult for us to know,” he added.
Giorgio Trombatore, director for the International Medical Corps in the Congo, said he was among the first group of people to visit the site of the attacks.
“Two hundred to 400 armed men systematically pillaged and raped women in the villages,” Trombatore said.
“The rebels entered, tried to calm the population down by telling them they came for food and rest, and so
[they] shouldn't flee,” he said. “Another group came at night and it was then they started harassing the population.”
Armed men often raped the women in front of their children and husbands, IMC said in a news release.
During the four-day attack across 16 villages, according to the UN, rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, as well as militiamen from the notorious Mai Mai movement, also looted villages.
An earlier report said three peacekeepers were killed and seven others were wounded, but those deaths and injuries stemmed from a previous incident.
Ban said Tuesday he was “outraged” by the attacks.
Photo: UN Peacekeepers patrol a camp for people displaced by militia violence July 26, 2007 in Rutshuru, Eastern Congo. (Getty Images)
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