Two military observers from the United Nations mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been kidnapped in the town of Beni in the eastern Kivu region, rebels said on Friday.
The announcement by the Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement (RCD-ML) came a day after the group signed a truce with a rival, larger rebel group, ending weeks of fighting for the control of key towns in the mineral-rich Kivu region.
The abducted men ”disappeared (Thursday) in the evening with neither their personal belongings nor their vehicles,” said a leader of the RCD-ML, which administers Kivu.
”Their belongings were in disarray but there was no blood at their lodgings,” he said.
The UN mission in the DRC confirmed the kidnappings but has not revealed the names or nationalities of the two missing men. The UN mission has eight military observers of various nationalities in Beni.
The head of the rebel RCD-ML, which is allied to the Kinshasa government, said Friday he was ”indignant” at news of the kidnapping, which he said could have been carried out by renegade members of his own movement.
”We are following some serious leads and there is a probability that the kidnappers are members of the RCD-ML who, corrupted by the enemy, have betrayed us,” said RCD-ML leader Mbusa Nyamwisi.
The RCD-ML had clashed for weeks in the region with the much larger, more powerful rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).
But on Thursday, the day the Rwandan-backed RCD announced it had seized the town of Lubero, near Beni, from the RCD-ML, delegates for the two sides signed a truce in Bujumbura, the Burundian capital.
”We are going to find the ‘milobs’ and get our house back in order,” said Nyamwisi, using a slang abbreviation for ”military observers”.
The UN is conducting its own investigation into the kidnapping. Late last year the RCD-ML clashed with yet another rebel movement, the Uganda-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) and a small rebel group allied to it, for control of Beni, the main town in Nord-Kivu province.
DRC plunged into war four and a half years ago, when an uprising by the two main rebel groups — the RDC and MLC — boiled over into a conflict that drew in half a dozen African countries.
The war officially ended in April, when a peace accord took effect, but fighting has continued in parts of the vast central African country, mainly in the northeastern Ituri region and in Nord-Kivu.
The UN mission in the DRC was mandated in November 1999 by the UN Security Council to deploy military personnel, including observers, to the country, backed by specialists in human rights, child welfare, humaniatarian affairs, public information, political affairs, and medical and administrative support.
As of April this year, it had 509 military observers, 3 805 troops and 50 civilian police in the country, the former Belgian colony of Zaire. – Sapa-AFP