U.N. Report

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BUKAVU, Congo -- At the Panzi Hospital here in South Kivu province, doctors repair some of the most horrific injuries of war.

The hospital treats women with gynecological and reproductive injuries, the seemingly unhealable wounds inflicted by the gang rapes or invasive tortures of soldiers bent on terrifying the civilian population.

Doctors here treat women with pregnancy complications and obstetric fistulas, in which a woman's reproductive and urinary organs are so badly injured they cannot heal, creating chronic injury and infections.

Kivu has long been a battleground, with more than a dozen militias sporadically fighting government troops and each other for control of resources and transportation routes.

War has battered eastern Congo for a decade, and the women are paying with their lives and dignity.

The Panzi Hospital has treated some 10,000 victims of sexual violence in the past five years and operated on more than 1,200 women with rape-induced fistulas.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. coordinator for humanitarian-relief operations, said he has seen dozens of sexually assaulted girls recovering at this hospital -- all of them younger than 12 years old.

Many women have been kidnapped by military groups, forced to work as soldiers, sexual slaves or in other capacities until they are ransomed or escape. HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are also a problem.

"It is a new technique of war that we are seeing," Dr. Denis Mukwege told reporters last week. "It is a sickness of our century ... a tactic that aims to destroy through the spread of HIV and mutilation."

He was speaking on Friday, which was World AIDS Day.