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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
DRC: Rebel factions battle for control of Mbingi, North Kivu Province
KINSHASA, 5 June 2003 (IRIN) - Heavy fighting between two rebel factions for control of the area of Mbingi in North Kivu Province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has been taking place since the weekend of 31 May - 1 June, the UN Mission in the DRC, MONUC, confirmed on Wednesday.
The fighting involves the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) and the RCD-Kisangani/Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K/ML), allied with Kinshasa, some 140 km north of Goma, in the region of Mbingi.
MONUC called on the belligerents to respect their commitments to a cessation of hostilities under a global peace accord signed in April in Pretoria, South Africa.
For their part, the two rebel movements accused each other of having started the battle for control of the region.
"Fighting has continued until this morning," Lambert Mende, spokesman for RCD-K/ML, told IRIN on Wednesday. "We have repelled an offensive by RCD-Goma supported by the RPA [Rwandan Patriotic Army, the Rwandan national military], upon whom we have inflicted major losses. However, Mbingi is still threatened by RCD-Goma and the Rwandans."
He said RCD-K/ML had captured Rwandan soldiers, and would present them to the media on Thursday in Kinshasa, the DRC capital. He said Rwanda had used its Hutu prisoners accused of genocide - who have been let out of prison and enrolled in the RPA - for the attack.
"Ninety percent of the prisoners we have taken fit this description," he said.
The spokesman for RCD-Goma, Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga, said his movement repelled the attack launched by coalition forces of the government troops and Interahamwe fighters flown in from Mbuji-Mayi on planes belonging to Uhuru Airlines. The Interahamwe are ethnic Hutu militias largely responsible for the genocide of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994.
Lola Kisanga said that the RCD-Goma had killed 18 fighters of the coalition forces and had wounded many others, but had suffered no deaths and only three wounded among its own forces.
The RCD-K/ML denied an alliance with the Interahamwe, but admitted that they were allied with Kinshasa.
"It is no secret that there are FAC officers in Beni, but no more than 200. They are military instructors who do not take part in the fighting, it is we who are at the frontline," Kolosso Sumahili, secretary-general of RCD-K/ML, said.
Both sides admitted that the fighting involving heavy weaponry had caused the civilian population to flee the locality. However, neither side nor MONUC could provide figures regarding the number of displaced.
RCD-Goma accused the Kinshasa government of having violated the ceasefire through its support to RCD-K/ML.
Meanwhile, RCD-K/ML accused RCD-Goma of violating agreements reached in Harare and Kampala that recognised the region of Mbingi as being under the control of RCD-K/ML when those accords were signed.
MONUC had earlier confirmed that RCD-Goma had launched a military offensive in April, during which it captured Bunyatenge, Muhanga and Mbingi.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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