United Nations peacekeepers said on Saturday they had negotiated the departure of a rebel army from a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) lawless east.
During a patrol on Saturday morning, UN peacekeepers found that rebels loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda had taken up positions in the village of Nyanzale, located 65km north of Goma, one of the main towns in the eastern DRC near the Rwandan border.
Several platoons of UN peacekeepers were sent to the village along with a combat helicopter to negotiate the rebels’ departure, UN spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich said.
”We told them that we would use force if they didn’t abandon their position,” he said.
The rebels agreed to leave, but did not go very far, setting up a new base in the forested hills surrounding the village, he said.
The apparent attempt to capture the village was in direct violation of a peace deal signed by Nkunda in January to bring an end to hostilities, Dietrich said.
Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi, claims he is protecting the DRC’s minority Tutsi population from Hutu extremists that invaded the region from neighbouring Rwanda at the end of that country’s 1994 genocide.
The Hutu militia, known as the Interhamwe, is blamed for numerous atrocities in the DRC, as well as the slaying of a half-million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during Rwanda’s genocide.
Over the years, Nkunda’s men have become equally brutal and are now accused of raiding villages and enlisting child soldiers, as well as of systematic rape and executions. — Sapa-AP