Rebel troops on Monday killed a dozen Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government soldiers in a battle for control of the eastern town of Kanyabayonga, rebel officials said.
The rebels, a mutinous force within the vast country’s post-war army, were in control of central Kanyabayonga, and said they killed the regular troops when fighting resumed in the morning on the northern outskirts of the town.
An AFP correspondent saw about a dozen bodies, partly in military uniform, which were being buried. It was apparent from their condition that they had been dead for some hours.
Officials with the rebels, who were incorporated into the vast country’s army under a series of peace pacts to end the 1998-2003 war that ravaged the DRC, said the regular soldiers were killed in fighting in an area between the north of the town and Kaina, which is about 4km distant.
The AFP correspondent earlier heard light weapons and artillery fire coming from the outskirts of the town.
The DRC army has been fighting to recapture Kanyabayonga from rebellious soldiers since the weekend, according to the United Nations mission in the DRC (Monuc), which has deployed across the country to monitor the peace process.
Earlier on Monday, Monuc said the rebels controlled all access routes to Kanyabayonga.
The soldiers, and the fighting was described as a mutiny of troops from the Congolese army’s eighth military region, based in Goma, the chief town of Nord Kivy province on the border with Rwanda.
The dissident troops were mainly former rebel fighters in the Congolese Rally for Democracy, a rebel group backed by Rwanda that controlled much of the eastern DRC during the war, which dragged in the armies of more than half a dozen other African countries..
The pact that brought the conflict to an end also brought the former rebels into a transitional government, and reorganised the DRC’s military into regions when it brought former rebel fighters into its ranks.
Kanyabayonga was deserted by residents on Monday, with an abandoned mattress here, boxes of powdered milk there, appearing to indicate that the inhabitants had fled suddenly or that there may have been incidents of looting.
According to DRC military officials, at least four Congolese soldiers were wounded in six hours of fighting on Sunday with the rebels in Kanyabayonga, and a Monuc spokesperson said the army took four soldiers prisoner, two of whom were believed to be members of the Rwandan army.
After an overnight lull, fresh fighting erupted on Monday morning between the army and the rebels. — Sapa-AFP