Wednesday, 12 November 2008
By Finbarr O'Reilly
The bodies of two Congolese soldiers, buzzing with flies, lay sprawled on a road of black volcanic grit in eastern Congo Wednesday after new clashes in spite of world appeals to stop the simmering war.
This is the tense frontline in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where Tutsi rebels and government troops face each other just 200 metres (yards) apart in the verdant bush beneath the steaming Nyiragongo volcano.
The soldiers, both shot through the head, were killed in a sharp exchange of artillery, mortar, rocket and machine gun fire late Tuesday a few kilometres (miles) from a refugee camp at Kibati sheltering 80,000 civilians displaced by violence.
United Nations peacekeepers, who want the Security Council to dispatch more troops to stop the fighting in east Congo, sent in helicopters to try to halt any more combat on the lines some 15 km (9 miles) north of the North Kivu provincial capital Goma.
"We are trying to separate them to de-escalate any new fighting. This is a must. The rebels and army are too close," Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, military spokesman for the U.N. mission in Congo, known as MONUC, told Reuters.
Despite earnest appeals from around the world -- from U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to Pope Benedict -- for a shaky cease-fire to be respected in North Kivu, civilians, soldiers and rebels are still being killed daily in repeated skirmishes.
Weeks of fighting have driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes or previous refugee camps, triggering a swelling humanitarian crisis.
U.N. peacekeeping officials, who have appealed to the Security Council to reinforce the stretched 17,000-strong U.N. force in Congo with 3,000 extra troops, say the reinforcements, once approved, could take at least two months to arrive.
On the frontline, Captain Patrick, an officer leading Tutsi rebels who swear loyalty to renegade General Laurent Nkunda, said his men killed some 30-40 government soldiers in Tuesday's battle. He said their bodies were "in the bush."
His fighters crouched in bushes on either side of the road Wednesday, while some vehicles and pedestrians passed.
A U.N. helicopter clattered overhead.
CONFLICTING CLAIMS
Two hundred metres (yards) away, his government counterpart, Lt. Dashmadida Sangolo, said his soldiers lost only two dead and that heavier losses were suffered by the rebels of Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
"The CNDP attacked us at 1900 hours with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and AK 47s. They came down the road towards us to 100 metres from here," said Sangolo, who said he was waiting for orders to recover the bodies of his dead troops.
Rebel chief Nkunda, who says his 4-year-old rebellion is defending Congolese Tutsis from attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels and local militias allied with Congo's army, has threatened to restart an offensive against Goma, suspended late last month.
The North Kivu conflict traces its origins back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when Hutus massacred 800,000 Tutsis, spilling refugees and rival fighters into neighbouring Congo. Rwanda's Tutsi-led government denies Congolese charges it backs Nkunda.
Some fear the latest fighting may escalate into a rerun of Congo's wider 1998-2003 war which sucked in six African armies and killed several million people.
Nkunda says that unless President Joseph Kabila agrees to direct talks on Congo's future, he will take his guerrilla war to the capital Kinshasa some 1,500 km (900 miles) to the west.
Although analysts acknowledge Nkunda's 4,000 battle-hardened guerrillas are more than a match for the ill-disciplined and demoralised Congolese army, they question whether he can really threaten Kinshasa. U.N. peacekeepers have reinforced Goma.
"We have to pressure all participants to not renew the fighting," U.N. military spokesman Dietrich said.
U.N. under-secretary-general for peacekeeping Alain Le Roy told reporters Tuesday he believed many members of the Security Council supported reinforcing the U.N. troops in Congo, despite apparent initial reluctance to commit more soldiers.
But many Congolese, who have accused U.N. peacekeepers in the past of failing to prevent marauding rebels, militiamen and soldiers from killing, raping and robbing civilians, say the reinforcements will come too late for those who are dying now.
Human rights groups say dozens of civilians, mostly males, were killed at Kiwanja, further north from Kibati, last week when Nkunda's rebels drove Mai-Mai militia from the town.
"Sending soldiers is one thing but they (the U.N.) were at Kiwanja and did nothing. They need to send soldiers that can do something. They are not protecting us," Gilbert Ndinurwando, the head of an association of displaced civilians near Kibati, said.
(Additional reporting by David Lewis in Kinshasa, Hereward Holland in Goma and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)
Swissinfo
November 12, 2008 |
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Congo
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