About 15 000 people have fled towns and villages near Numbi, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after rebellious soldiers clashed there with army forces, a United Nations spokesperson said on Wednesday.
”Around 15 000 people have fled the town of Numbi and outlying areas in recent days after exchanges of fire between members of the … armed forces and dissident soldiers loyal to General Laurent Nkunda,” army Major Francois Ouedraogo told reporters.
Numbi was one of several towns overrun in June by troops loyal to Nkunda, one of two dissident officers who led soldiers into Bukavu, the capital of Sud Kivu province, at the beginning of the same month.
Nkunda said he had seized Bukavu to prevent the massacre of Congolese Tutsis.
But after holding the town for one week, he withdrew from the provincial capital to nearby Minova, admitting he had been misinformed about the seriousness of the threat to his ethnic kin.
The DRC army last week claimed it had dislodged Nkunda and his men from Minova, the last town they held in Sud-Kivu. The dissident soldiers had fled towards towns in neighbouring Nord-Kivu, an army spokesperson said.
Ouedraogo was unable to say where the fleeing people had sought refuge.
The UN mission in the DRC, has organised two patrols in the area, which lies on the border between the two Kivu provinces, but neither patrol reported running into any fighting, he said.
On Monday, the army said that unidentified insurgents had attacked its troops at Numbi.
The DRC is struggling to emerge from a five-year war that began in the east and has continued to simmer there, despite relative calm returning to the rest of the vast country. — Sapa-AFP