Fighting between the regular army of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and armed men resumed early on Wednesday near the eastern town of Kanyabayonga, an AFP journalist reported, while United Nations officials in the capital, Kinshasa, reported an attempted incursion from neighbouring Rwanda.
In Kinshasa, officials of the UN mission in the DRC (Monuc) said separately that Pakistani UN forces posted in the eastern town of Bukavu had repulsed an attempt by armed men to cross into the DRC from Rwanda in three boats.
Bukavu lies near the narrow strait where Lake Kivu and Lake Tanganyika meet, with Rwanda on the other side of the water.
”According to the Monuc soldiers, the people on board the dug-out canoes opened fire on them,” said Mamadou Bah, the UN mission’s spokesperson.
”The Pakistani peacekeepers responded, causing the boats to return to where they had come from,” he added.
In Kanyabayonga, which is not far from the Rwandan border, heavy firing from both light and heavy weapons resumed at about 5am local time. Firing was coming from the centre of the town, and was being directed towards the north.
Officials of the Kinshasa government have described the fighting in the region as a ”war against Rwanda”.
Other reports have described the combatants as mutinous soldiers from the DRC army.
Fighting around Kanyabayonga had halted for 24 hours before it resumed early on Wednesday, an AFP reporter in the region said.
It was impossible to confirm reports that Rwanda may be involved in the Kanyabayonga fighting, following days of heated exchanges between the Kigali and Kinshasa governments about the continued presence in the eastern DRC of Rwandan Hutus accused of carrying out genocidal massacres in Rwanda in 1994.
Monuc has sent a military team to the east to investigate the cause of the fighting in Kanyabayonga, in which the DRC army has said 25 rebels and two army soldiers have been killed since the weekend and two Rwandan soldiers captured.
The heavily armed rebel fighters in Kanyabayonga have claimed to have killed 12 soldiers from DRC’s eighth military region, which covers much of the restive east of the DRC.
A group of Monuc military observers is due to travel into Rwanda ”to carry out fuller investigations”, Bah said. — Sapa-AFP
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