The plane carrying the human rights minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ntumba Luaba, was hit by gunfire on Thursday as it was taking off from the troubled northeastern DRC town of Bunia, said a witness.
The engine on the right side of the aircraft was damaged by the shots but the plane made an emergency landing and no one was said to be injured.
It was not immediately known what weapon was used in the incident.
Luaba, a key member of the Ituri Pacification Committee (IPC), was on a fact-finding mission in the region. He had been kidnapped in the region last year but was later freed.
Rival ethnic groups clashed in Bunia on Wednesday, just after Ugandan troops left the town, and again on Thursday, corroborating sources said.
”There was fighting between Lendu and UPC militias around the airport in the afternoon,” said a humanitarian official on Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Soldiers of the UN force in DRC, Monuc, have begun beefing up their presence in Bunia and the surrounding Ituri region.
Thousands of civilians sought refuge in Monuc’s compound on Wednesday, according to the force’s representative in Kinshasa, Hamadoun Toure.
”Lendu and (allied) Ngiti fighters came into town to find members of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC),” a Hema-led rebel group, said a humanitarian aid worker in Bunia, asking not to be named.
Ugandan soldiers had chased the UPC out of Bunia two months ago.
The last Ugandan troops left Bunia on Tuesday under a large-scale withdrawal from the region conducted under international pressure. One Ugandan security official said it was the UPC that attacked the town on Wednesday in an attempt to retake it and that Monuc forces had pulled back to the airport.
”The fighters who came in yesterday are looting today (Thursday) and we can still hear sporadic gunfire,” said a Bunia resident. – Sapa-AFP