The Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) envoy to the United Nations called on the Security Council on Wednesday to intervene to stop what he called an ”imminent” Rwandan attack on the eastern DRC city of Goma.
Atoki Ileka said that DRC authorities had ”observed concentrations of Rwandan troops in the Rwandan border town of Gisenyi”, and that this suggested that an attack on Goma, located just across the frontier, was ”imminent”.
Goma is the capital of Nord-Kivu province, which is at the centre of renewed fighting between rebel and government forces that broke out August 28 in the east of the DRC.
”We have asked the Security Council to put the necessary pressure on Rwanda to prevent a new [Rwandan] aggression against DRC,” Ileka said, adding that troops in Rwandan uniforms had seized the Rumangabo military camp near Goma early on Wednesday.
Rwanda’s UN ambassador, Joseph Nsengimana, dismissed Ileka’s charges as unfounded.
He said that Kinshasa levelled the accusations only after Kigali sent a letter to the DRC Foreign Ministry last week citing reports of collusion between DRC government troops and Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
FDLR members are accused of having taken part in the 1994 genocide that claimed the lives of about 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994 in Rwanda.
”It is not the first time that they [DRC authorities] make such false accusations,” Nsengimana said.
Forces loyal to DRC’s renegade ethnic Tutsi leader Laurent Nkunda, meanwhile, earlier on Wednesday said they had seized the Rumangabo camp, located about 50km north of the Goma.
Several military sources in DRC, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the capture of Rumangabo, and DRC army General Marcellin Lukama confirmed that several clashes across the Nord-Kivu province had erupted.
Renewed fighting broke out August 28 in eastern DRC, with government troops and Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) forces violating the ceasefire reached under the Goma peace accord in January.
On Sunday, Kinshasa accused neighbouring Rwanda of ”visibly supporting” the CNDP forces, whose leader, Nkunda, last week called on all Congolese people to ”stand up” to the national government.
But Nsengimana denied that Rwanda was covertly supporting and arming Nkunda’s forces, asserting that the CNDP seized large quantities of weapons during fighting with DRC government forces last May. — Sapa-AFP