More than 100 bodies have been found on a road leading to the strategic port of Uvira in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a rebel representative said on Saturday.
The bodies were mainly those of Mai-Mai warriors and local ethnic Tutsis, the Banyamulenge, who last week seized Uvira before the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) marched back into the town on Saturday, he said.
”The enemy sustained 100 dead. About 10 civilian bodies were also counted,” said Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga, stating that these people had been killed during an RCD counter-offensive in the past 24 hours.
”About 100 of the enemy were wounded and almost 50 taken prisoner,” the representative added. He said RCD forces were in full control of the centre of Uvira, after re-entering the town which fell to the rival militia forces in the region after Rwandan troops who back the RCD quit the country.
Uvira lies at the northwestern end of Lake Tanganyika and is a strategic town for access to the RCD-controlled capitals of Sud-Kivu and Nord-Kivu provinces, Bukavu and Goma, to the north. – Sapa-AFP