Thousands of civilians on Thursday fled clashes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, amid Western concern over conflicting claims about whether Rwandan troops are operating in the area.
Bernard Le Flaive, of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told AFP by telephone that ”several thousand” civilians were fleeing to Kanya, Kanyabayunga and Kirumba. They are settlements about 150km north of Goma, which is on the Rwandan border.
There have been reports of Kigali deploying soldiers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in recent days to take on Hutu rebels who fled to the vast country after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Le Flaive did not identify whom the rebels were fighting, but said that the civilians came from areas north of Rutshuru and Walikale.
”They are fleeing fighting, operations against the FDLR,” the organisation adopted by the Hutu extremists who fled Rwanda after carrying out much of the killing during the genocide.
”Atrocities are also taking place. We expect more displaced in the coming days,” he added.
The UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, Monuc, said on Thursday it had ”a cluster of corroborating clues that seem to prove Rwandan troops are present in DRC,” said spokesperson Mamadou Bah.
Helicopter patrols in the Rutshuru region ”have allowed us to take aerial photograhs showing sometimes abandoned bivouacs and sometimes well-equipped soldiers in new uniforms in the camps,” Monuc spokesperson Mamadou Bah said.
On Wednesday, Monuc said one of its teams had come across a group of about 100 soldiers thought to be Rwandan near Rutshuru.
Bah said it was difficult to confirm whether Kigali has in fact redeployed troops in DRC.
Kigali has twice — in 1996 and 1998 — sent large numbers of troops to DRC, ostensibly to neutralise Hutu rebels.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame suggested on Tuesday that its troops might have returned, but his advisor on the Great Lakes region, Richard Sezibera, denied that on Thursday.
”All reported sightings of Rwandan troops in the DRC are false,” he told a news conference, although he warned that ”if it became necessary in defence of Rwandan territorial integrity… Rwanda would be forced to enter the DRC.”
He said Rwanda was ”not an enemy” of the DRC.
However, ”Rwanda is a threat to the ex-FAR and the Interahamwe,” he added, referring to the former Rwandan soldiers and allied militia who led the 1994 genocide.
”Some sections of Congolese forces are in close collaboration with them.”
Sezibera said any action in DRC would ”be limited in time, waiting for a solution from the international community”.
He added that Rwandan proposals to the international community and Kinshasa government, such as giving Monuc a mandate to disarm Hutu fighters by force or second Rwandan forces to the DRC army to help, had been rejected.
Meanwhile Western leaders urged Kigali to show restraint.
”Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as for that of all the other states of the Great Lakes region, is fundamental,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said in a statement issued in Brussels.
The United States said on Wednesday that it was sending a senior diplomat to Rwanda and the DRC this week to urge both countries to resolve their disputes peacefully.
”Obviously, we believe that both countries should solve their difference diplomatically and not militarily, through the exchange of gunfire or the movement of troops in the area,” said deputy state department spokesperson Adam Ereli.
The same day a committee comprised of ambassadors from the five permanent members of the UN Security council in Kinshasa overseeing the transition to peace denounced what it called a new ”aggression” against the DRC.
Britain has separately warned of the ”very serious repercussions” of a fresh Rwandan deployment in DRC. – Sapa-AFP