GOMA

An infant gorilla in a Democratic Republic of Congo sanctuary is smashing palm nuts between two rocks to extract oil, surprising and intriguing scientists who say they have much to learn about what gorillas can do — and about what that says about evolution.

The Nyiragongo volcano that looms over Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo could soon wipe out the city, said a risk analysis report by volcano experts. Provincial authorities in Nord-Kivu have prohibited public release of the report that recommends the city be moved to avoid the fallout of another volcanic eruption, possibly within two years.

Former rebels have blocked Congolese troops from reinforcing positions near its volatile border with Rwanda, after clashes between the two sides on Sunday, the region’s military chief said on Monday. Colonel Etienne Bindu, military chief of the North Kivu province, said the two sides are, ”are watching each other like cat and dog” in the town of Kanyabayonga, the scene of the fighting, he said.

Roman Catholic and Protestant religious leaders in the troubled eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday warned their congregations against a ”spirit of division and tribalism”. There have been persistent reports that neighbouring Rwanda has sent its soldiers across the border to deal with Hutu extremist rebels in the DRC.

Empty villages and reports of houses being torched in a score of communities on Sunday indicated a growing conflict in the remote eastern regions of this sprawling country, where Rwandan troops are feared to have invaded. A spokesperson for the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo said armed men suspected of being Rwandan soldiers have been attacking and burning villages for more than a week.

Thousands of civilians on Thursday fled clashes in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, amid Western concern over conflicting claims about whether Rwandan troops are operating in the area. Bernard Le Flaive, of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that ”several thousand” civilians were fleeing to Kanya, Kanyabayunga and Kirumba.

International concern was growing on Thursday after Rwandan President Paul Kagame announced that his country’s troops will launch an operation in pursuit of Rwandan Hutu rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In a letter to the African Union, Kagame wrote that he hoped the operation would not last longer than two weeks and that it would target only the rebels.

UN troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Wednesday spotted a group of 100 apparently Rwandan soldiers, raising fears that Rwanda was once again invading the vast neighbouring country. The report by the UN mission in DRC, Monuc, came a day after Rwandan President Paul Kagame announced his troops would target Rwandan Hutu extremists in eastern DRC because the UN had failed to disarm them.

Militia fighters have clashed with former rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) volatile east, forcing at least 2 000 people to flee, officials said on Friday. The fighting erupted on Monday and continued until Wednesday in Bweremana, about 25km from the eastern city of Goma.

In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, more than a year after the end of the war in the vast Central African country, rape continues to be widespread, steeping its victims in agony while their attackers almost always get off scot-free. Aid workers in Sud-Kivu province said in December that more than 8 000 rape cases had been reported there alone since the start of the war in 1998, or around 30 people every week.

Women with babies strapped to their backs balance their belongings in brightly coloured cloth on their heads as they walk toward the port of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They join hundreds who have been streaming out across Lake Kivu in rickety boats, saying they fear renewed warfare.

Fear, rather than loyalty or ideology, is what keeps many young Rwandan rebels holed up in the bush in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to men who surrendered from the insurgency. ”If they catch you trying to leave they kill you or they beat you up until you’re maimed. We asked for leave to go to the market and then we ran away.”

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s national flag — a rich blue banner studded with gold stars — has been raised in the eastern rebel stronghold of Goma, a move a rebel official said on Wednesday was a sign the five-year civil war was ending despite fighting elsewhere and acrimony among officials in the new transitional government.

Rwanda withdrew its last troops from neighbouring Congo on Saturday after about 1 100 soldiers marched in single file out of the war-ravaged country, the Rwandan army chief said.

More than 100 bodies have been found on a road leading to the strategic port of Uvira in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a rebel representative said on Saturday.