Fresh fighting on DRC-Rwanda border
iAfrica.com - 9 hours ago
Fri, 13 Jun 2014 7:52 AM
Congolese soldiers guard a military base.
Rwandan and Congolese troops traded heavy weapons fire on Thursday in
a second day of fighting on the border between the two neighbours
which have been locked in a decades-long dispute.
After the morning clashes abated, rival troops were engaged in a stare
down from afar in the mountainous Kanyesheza region which straddles
the border, a Congolese administrative official said on condition of
anonymity.
An AFP reporter on a press trip to the area with the Rwandan army and
foreign defence attaches said the combat zone - some 20 kilometres
north of the border towns of Goma in the DRC and Gisenyi in Rwanda -
was calm Thursday afternoon.
"There were heavy arms fire, explosions, rockets," which lasted for
half an hour, said a resident in the area of the morning clashes.
Another resident on the Congolese side of the frontier said about "30
families" were fleeing the border regions after the fighting.
Trading blame
A senior Congolese military officer said that Rwandan troops had
attacked their positions, but a Rwandan military source, also speaking
anonymously, told AFP that there had "not been serious clashes, they
were sporadic firings" of heavy weapons.
The latest cross-border clash came a day after the two sides exchanged
automatic weapons fire, with each blaming the other for the outbreak
of violence.
Rwanda's army on Thursday displayed five bodies to journalists which
it said were Congolese soldiers killed in the fighting on Wednesday,
an AFP reporter said.
Lambert Mende, a spokesperson for the Congolese government, accused
Rwanda of lying about the deaths of its soldiers.
"Rwandans have taken corpses from hospitals, or killed poor peasants -
perhaps Congolese, Rwandan maybe - just to back up their story," he
said.
The DRC has said only one of its soldiers was killed.
The Congolese army said the conflict started after one of its soldiers
was kidnapped by Rwandan troops who crossed into its North Kivu
province.
However Rwanda said Congolese troops crossed into its territory and
opened fire on Rwandan soldiers.
"We are only seeking to reinforce our positions," North Kivu governor
Julien Paluku said. A resident of a village on the road from Goma to
Kanyesheza, said he saw mounted heavy machine-guns and three army
tanks roll past on Thursday morning.
Each side denied returning fire when shelled by the other.
In an apparent sign of goodwill, the Rwandan and Congolese armies sent
a team from a Joint Verification Mission (JVM) they have formed with
the United Nations to carry out checks in the conflict zone, a JVM
official who monitors the border said.
Both the JVM and a western military source confirmed the deaths of the
five Congolese soldiers. No deaths were reported in Thursday's
fighting.
Farhan Haq, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,
said diplomatic efforts were under way to "avoid unnecessary tension"
and to encourage the DRC and Rwanda to "continue furthering good
neighbourly relations".
Strained relations
Relations have been strained for decades between the neighbours, with
the DRC accusing Rwanda of seeking to destabilise it by backing
various militia which have risen up against Kinshasa.
Much of the tension arises from the presence in the eastern DRC of
Rwandan Hutu rebels in the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of
Rwanda (FDLR).
This armed movement's older members are accused of taking part in the
1994 genocide of ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda which left an estimated 800
000 dead in three months of slaughter.
The FDLR has since been accused of serious atrocities against
villagers in the DRC.
The Hutu fighters first fled across the border 20 years ago when the
Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front took power in Kigali, led by Paul
Kagame, who is today president of the small central African nation.
Congolese authorities are seeking to disarm FDLR forces, estimated at
around 1,500, according to the United Nations, or 4,000, according to
Kigali.
About 100 rebels turned themselves in on May 31 and have been given
the option of returning to Rwanda or seeking political asylum in the
DRC. AFP
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