Updated

The military head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo says he is urgently dispatching a unit of U.N. soldiers to a remote location in eastern Congo where a massacre killed 21 people.

Most of the victims were hacked to death, including a child whose dismembered limbs were found in a tree.

Lt. Gen. Carlos Dos Santos Cruz told reporters Wednesday that he plans to act immediately against the assailants, whom he identified as a Ugandan-led rebel group, ADF-NALU.

He said they carried out the killings on Friday and Saturday in the territory of Beni.

The planned deployment underscores the more robust role the United Nations is playing in Congo, ever since the creation of a special intervention brigade that allows peacekeepers to go on the offensive.