Rebels from a small movement in northeastern Democratic of Congo have captured the town of Bafwasende from the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) dominant in the area, a UN representative said on Wednesday.
Bafwasende fell last week to forces of the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML), who were given military support by Mai-Mai tribal fighters active in the region, Hamadoun Toure told journalists.
Toure, giving a weekly briefing for the UN Observer Mission in DRC (Monuc), said the RCD-ML and the Mai-Mai militia had set up a joint command for the town of less than 50 000 people in the Ituri region of Orientale Province.
An anonymous RCD-ML official confirmed the report and said there had been clashes between the Mai-Mai, led by a Major Michigan, and a coalition of MLC and RCD-N forces ”for almost a week”.
The RCD-ML, led by Mbusa Nyamwisi, was one of the rebel movements which signed a peace pact with the Kinshasa government in April this year — a deal which was also signed by the MLC, but not by the main Rwandan RCD-Goma, which holds much of the east of the
country.
The RCD-N is a splinter group from the RCD-ML. At the end of October, RCD-ML forces seized Mambasa — another town which had fallen briefly into the hands of Jean-Pierre Bemba’s MLC, which controls much of the north of the vast central African nation.
Mambasa was returned to RCD-ML control on paper as part of separate accords providing for the withdrawal from the DRC of troops from Uganda and Zimbabwe, which intervened on rival sides when civil war broke out in the country in August 1998.
These accords, signed under Monuc auspices, set out the territory controlled by each of the DRC movements and government forces active in the country.
At the height of the DRC conflict, no fewer than six foreign armies were involved. Uganda, which still has some troops in northeastern DRC for reasons of local security, and Rwanda backed rebel movements.
Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and at one stage Chad sent in troops to support the Kinshasa government. – Sapa-AFP