/ 31 January 1999

REBELS SEIZE LUBAO

REBELS in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have seized the northern Katanga province town of Lubao, killing ”many” soldiers of Rwanda’s routed Hutu army, a top rebel leader said on Sunday. ”The town was taken on January 27,” Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, the head of the rebel’s political wing, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), said from Goma on the Rwandan border.”A lot of arms were found there and we took two prisoners,” Wamba dia Wamba said, adding that ”these prisoners told us that the town was defended by soldiers of the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR). The enemy saw many killed, but only one person on our side was injured.”Military sources among the DRC rebels, who began a Congolese Tutsi-led insurgency against President Laurent Kabila last August, also told AFP that Lubao had been captured.