Gunfire rang out Thursday near Mushaki in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province, a day after a renegade former general appealed for a truce with the army, the United Nations said.
”Firing is going on this morning 2km or 3km from Mushaki,” Prem Tiwari, local military spokesperson for the UN’s peacekeeping mission in DRC, said.
Mushaki is situated about 30km from the provincial seat of Goma.
A UN-brokered ceasefire reached in early September has been shattered and fighting in recent days in the restive eastern Nord-Kivu province has left at least 85 rebels loyal to Laurent Nkunda and 16 troops dead, according to the regular army [FARDC].
”The FARDC is about 2km from Mushaki, where Nkunda loyalists are holding a strong position,” Tiwari added. ”It seems the FARDC began the shooting.”
Government forces have been fighting followers of Nkunda, who claims his aim is to defend minority Congolese Tutsis of the east from other population groups and armed movements, but has established himself as a powerful local warlord in the Masisi highlands and Rutshuru region further north.
Defence Minister Diemu Chikez said on Thursday in Kinshasa that the government acknowledged the renewed ceasefire request, but said the army ”has only been responding to Nkunda’s attacks”.
”He announces an end to the truce on Monday, then on Wednesday evening he wants a ceasefire. We take note, but we’re waiting to see how this works out on the ground.
”The FARDC is not engaged in an offensive,” Chikez said. ”The general staff has given all dissident fighters until October 15 to go to regroupment camps. We’re waiting for our brothers to get to these camps for the mixing process.”
The army implemented a policy last year of forming ”mixed brigades”, with Nkunda’s troops alongside others from different parts of the vast country, but many renegades defected again, partly because they were told they could take no part in rounding up armed Hutu rebels from neighbouring Rwanda in the region.
Some of those forces are held responsible for the 1994 genocide of about 800 000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in Rwanda, and fled into the DRC when a Tutsi-led rebel movement took control of the country in July that year.
Late on Wednesday, Nkunda appealed to the UN to establish another truce and offered to send 500 of his men to a transit camp, pending their reintegration into the regular forces.
A UN military base in the area has been ordered to pull out, Tiwari said, and displaced people gathered near the UN camp are fleeing in the direction of a Nkunda bastion, 25km away.
Nkunda’s 5 000 troops are pitted against 15 000 Congolese forces.
But the warlord’s recent appeals also follow strong pressure, particularly from the United States, to end the clashes and reintegrate his troops into the army, one diplomat said. — AFP
