I can't remember how many I killed, says boy who begs forgiveness

Before he goes to bed each night, Philemon Kambale prays for his victims and asks their forgiveness.

Thirteen-year-old Philemon is trying to understand why he has killed so many people. He can't find a reason. He vividly remembers, at the age of 10, killing 15 civilians within the first week of his deployment along the eastern frontier of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As the war progressed, he lost count of his victims.

"It's all bad and I am regretting it. They gave me drugs which drove me crazy ... I would then kill all women accused of witchcraft without any evidence that they were indeed witches," he says.

Before the war, he was unable to attend school because his family could not afford the fees. But Philemon never stopped dreaming. One day, he believed, he would become the first pilot from his village. If he failed, he still hoped to get any decent job and earn a wage to help his mother and four brothers and sisters. The idea of becoming a soldier never crossed his mind.

His dreams unravelled one day in November 2000 when soldiers from the UPC (Patriotic Union of Congo), a Congolese splinter rebel group backed by Uganda, invaded his village and rounded up all the young men and women.

Philemon was in the fields with his mother when the soldiers invaded. They bundled him into an open truck with other boys and girls from neighbouring villages and drove them to a secret location in eastern Congo before he could even say goodbye.

For three months, they were trained by Ugandan soldiers before he was deployed by the UPC in Iziro, one of the towns in eastern Congo then worst hit by the fighting in the vast central African country.

Philemon says he has tried everything to forget the atrocities he was forced to commit by his commanders before he extricated himself. But he still remembers. "If only the Lord can forgive me and help me have a new life ... That's my only wish," he said.

Philemon is now being sheltered by the Let's Protect Children Centre (LPCC) just outside Butembo. The centre is the first in the DRC to try to rehabilitate child soldiers and is funded by contributions from parents who want to help their children overcome the trauma of fighting.

Although the LPCC, which was established last year, had planned to take up to 400 children for a year's rehabilitation course in its dilapidated buildings, it has less than a quarter of that number because of a lack of resources. The centre's only teacher has gone without pay for a year.

Many of the children now at the LPCC have either fled the war or have been brought by their parents or local chiefs. Some are brought in by the rebel groups themselves. "Upon arrival, their behaviour is incomprehensible. They are in a huge state of trauma," the centre's acting director, Jean-Louis Kombi, said.

Salvin and Philemon Kiringo, twin brothers aged 13, were forced to go to war by the poverty at home. "We were told that we could only ever get to eat meat if we joined the war," Salvin said. But this was not to be. Once they joined the Mai Mai rebel group they were ordered to fight with stones and machetes, and soon realised that poverty at home was better than poverty in the bush.

They never got to eat the beef they were promised. They had no pay, no uniform, no food and no clothes. Their only experience of meat was when they killed mountain gorillas and monkeys for food. Their only pay was when they took money from the pockets of those they killed. Philemon says he killed 10 people with knives and machetes, while Salvin murdered 20.

Denise Kavira, 16, and two other girls of her age were forced to kill a prisoner-of-war captured from another rebel group by cutting his body into pieces. She says girls in the rebel camps were given drugs and then subjected to sexual abuse.

The children at the LPCC hardly understand what the war was about, only that they were "fighting for the Congo". Evidence of the abuse of children can be seen throughout the rebel-controlled towns in eastern Congo. Some roadblocks into the towns are manned by young children who seem overwhelmed by the weight of their guns. The trucks that patrol the towns are filled with youngsters with reels of ammunition around their bodies.

Mr Kombi of the LPCC estimates that out of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting for either the government or the five main rebel groups in the Congo, at least 70 per cent are children.

But the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by most governments, including the DRC, and prohibits the use of children under the age of 18 to fight wars, is not even discussed in the Congo. Human Rights Watch has listed the DRC as among the worst countries abusing children in armed conflict.