Operations by govermment troops, backed by United Nations forces, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have killed 86 Ugandan rebel fighters, the UN said on Wednesday.
Six members of the goverment forces, the FARDC, and one Indian UN peacekeeper had also died, the spokesperson for the UN Mission in Congo (Monuc), Lieutenant Colonel Frederic Medard, told reporters in Kinshasa, confirming numbers given earlier.
The four-day sweep, involving 3 500 FARDC soldiers and 600 Indian UN troops, took place in the north of Nord-Kivu province on the border with Uganda, 200km from the provincial capital Goma.
”We are counting 86 dead on the ADF/Nalu [Allied Democratic Forces/National Army for the Liberation of Uganda] side and four prisoners,” Medard said.
”Forty two assault rifles have been seized, two machine guns and an anti-aircraft gun.”
Besides the six FARDC losses there were 16 wounded, while four UN peacekeepers were hurt.
The latest figures were given after the fall on Tuesday of the rebels’ last stronghold in the province at Mwalika.
”[The rebels] put up some resistance,” said a FARDC officer who asked not to be named. ”They turned down repatriation, amnesty. They knew it was their last chance, but they lost.”
He said that more than 20 rebels had died at Mwalika.
The UN puts the number of Ugandan rebels in Nord-Kivu at around 1 500, while the FARDC reckons the number to be up to 3 000.
The FARDC began on Wednesday a ”zone sweep” to secure the area and ”neutralise rebels still on the ground,” it said.
The UN civil affairs bureau (Ocha) put at more than 11 000 the number of civilians displaced in the north of the province by fear of looting and violence.
”Among these displaced persons around 3 000 have fled the area of Rwenzori [near the Ugandan frontier] and headed south along the main road, and more than 8 000 others have been registered at Kamango and a nearby village,” an Ocha spokesperson said.
Ocha plans to distribute emergency food supplies but was on Wednesday waiting for a green light from Monuc to send in convoys to an area ”not yet made wholly secure”.
In separate incidents in the same province four FARDC deserters and two Rwandan Hutu rebels were killed in fighting with goverment forces. – Sapa-AFP