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Rwandan troops enter Congo, Congo officials say
Rwandan troops have killed at least 19 civilians in an attack on a town in eastern Congo, a Congolese commander said on Tuesday, after Rwanda said its forces may have launched an attack in pursuit of Hutu rebels.
There was no independent confirmation of a Rwandan incursion but both comments raised the prospect of fresh war in the region, where four million people have died in the past decade from genocide, war and conflict-related hunger and disease.
Mbusa Nyamwisi, a minister in the Democratic Republic of Congo government, said Rwandan troops had entered and joined with Congolese allies to burn villages and rape women in the remote forests of central Africa.
Colonel Etienne Bindu, acting commander of Congo's North Kivu region, said 19 civilians had been killed in one of the villages attacked on Sunday.
"Nineteen people have been killed in the attack on Bukumbirwa. These were civilians who died," Bindu told Reuters.
"They hid in their houses thinking they would be safe when the Rwandans attacked but the Rwandan army proceeded to burn their houses," he added.
Rwanda has threatened to enter Congo and attack Hutu fighters based there if Kinshasa and U.N. forces fail to disarm the rebels, some of whom took part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
"We shall take up arms and pursue them, it is not far from now, it could even be happening today," Rwandan President Paul Kagame said of Hutu rebels based in Congo.
The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR) rebels say Rwandan troops have crossed into Congo's North Kivu province in the area of Bunagama and Kibumba in recent days in order to seize the mineral-rich east of Africa's third biggest country.
"U.N. KNEW OF REBEL ADVANCE," RWANDA SAYS
Kagame said peacekeeping troops of the U.N. Mission in Congo knew of an advance by the rebels in South Kivu province on Rwanda's borders but had chosen to keep silent about it.
"Failure on the side of the U.N. and international community to deal with this threat means that we must pursue these extremists on our own," he said in remarks to parliament.
Congo's foreign minister said his country reserved the right to use "all means" to defend itself from an attack.
"Kagame has solemnly confirmed this Tuesday...his willingness to take responsibility for a new outbreak of hostilities against the DRC," Ramazani Baya said in a statement.
Nyamwisi told Reuters by telephone from the eastern town of Beni that Rwandan troops were attacking villages near the border 100 miles north of the eastern city of Goma.
"The Rwandans have entered. They don't come in through the main roads but they are all over the place," he said.
"They have been attacking and burning villages with a severity that I have not seen in the region, not even when the Rwandans were here before," he said.
A U.N. humanitarian source said without elaborating the world body had reports of civilians "on the move" in areas north of Goma. Rwanda has twice invaded Congo in the past decade to hit the rebels. The last attack, in 1998, was one of the triggers for a five-year civil war which sucked in five of its neighbors. In Pretoria, a senior South African government official said South Africa regarded troop movements on the Congo-Rwanda border as a serious concern and had urged both sides to avoid war. "Clearly it is a serious situation and everybody is trying to do everything to defuse it," Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said, speaking before Kagame's remarks were reported. Congo officials said on Monday President Joseph Kabila was sending up to 10,000 soldiers to North Kivu to prevent the rebels and Rwandan forces from launching cross-border attacks. Relief experts say any new war in Congo would deepen an existing humanitarian disaster in the country's lawless east. The U.N. estimates 3.3 million people, a third of them children, in east Congo are beyond the reach of relief groups and prey to armed groups spawned by years of war and massacres. The U.N. has been advocating voluntary disarmament of the rebels and its Security Council has urged Rwanda not to invade. Rwanda has called the voluntary plan a failed policy. |
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