and the advancing rebels. On 29 October 2008, a French request for an EU reinforcement of 1,500 troops was refused by several countries and appeared unlikely to materialize; however, the UN forces stated they would act to prevent takeovers of population centres. In November 2008, India announced that it would be sending the 3rd battalion of the 3rd Gorkha Rifles regiment to replace a Sikh Light Infantry battalion and join the peace-keeping effort in the Congo. India made the decision to send its elite forces amidst rising concerns that Indian peace-keepers were getting caught in the cross-fire between DRC government troops and rebels. On 4 November 2008, a 200-fighter strong Mai Mai militia force launched a surprise attack on CNDP troops in Kiwanja, a CNDP-controlled town near Rutshuru, North Kivu. The Mai Mai were initially able to retake the town but a speedy counter-attack returned control to the CNDP less than 24-hours later. After the town was retaken, CNDP forces under the command of Bosco Ntaganda combed through Kiwanja, searching out boys and men – who they accused of collaborating with the Mai Mai – and executing them on the spot. Older members of the community, both men and women, were also murdered and a large number of women were raped and assaulted. By the end of 5 November, over 150 civilians had been killed in Kiwanja in what has since been dubbed the Kiwanja Massacre. A UN base was situated less than from Kiwanja and over 100 Indian peacekeepers were present at the time of the attacks but the forces lacked basic intelligence capabilities – no one in the base spoke the necessary languages, as their interpreter had been reassigned without replacement a week prior – and the peacekeepers later said they had no idea the massacre was taking place until it was over. Lt. Col. H. S. Brar, commander of the Indian peacekeepers at Kiwanja summarized the failure as the result of "poor communication and staffing, inadequate equipment, intelligence breakdowns and spectacularly bad luck." In its report on the massacre, Human Rights Watch largely supported Brar's assessment but further observed that competing priorities from headquarters in Goma shifted focus to "assuring the security of humanitarian workers, a foreign journalist, and a group of military observers, rather than protecting the civilian population." In the immediate aftermath of the Kiwanja Massacre, the recently-appointed civilian and military heads of the UN