The UN was unable to confirm reports of civilian casualties from the operation, allowing themselves to avoid much embarrassment in the press. However, statistics are ultimately unknown.[4] According to a 1966 report prepared for the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, two Belgian women were killed at a UN checkpoint at the outskirts of Jadotville by Indian peacekeepers after the male driver of the car they were in suddenly accelerated instead of stopping. The "unauthorised" shooting ostensibly "greatly embarrassed" UN officials.[5] An American journalist in Katanga at the time also supported the assertion.[6] After the operation, a local priest sent a letter to the UN in protest of "the flagrant breach by UN troops of international conventions sacred to all civilised nations." He claimed that on 29 December Irish troops had fired upon patients in a ward of the Élisabethville Union Minière hospital at close range and that Ethiopian troops had killed 70 persons whose bodies were delivered to Prince Leopold Hospital before the end of 1962. The allegations were supported by Charles J. Bauer of the United States National Catholic Welfare Council and Archbishop Joseph Cornelius of Brussels.[7] Robert Gardiner refuted both accusations in an open letter to the vicar general of the Roman Catholic archbishopric in Élisabethville. Writing on the first charge, he said that Irish troops were not even in the area at the time. Instead, he detailed that Ethiopian soldiers had stormed the hospital compound after being subjected to heavy firing from Katangese gendarmes who had dug in there. Gardiner reported that the nun on duty had said some of the patients were wearing khaki clothing similar to the gendarmes' uniforms. He conceded that one patient was shot in the leg while another received a grazing wound. Gardiner also said no protests of the presence of gendarmes was ever forwarded to the International Red Cross and that the mother superior of the hospital testified that medical authorities had been advised by Union Minière officials to refrain from taking any action against the g
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