Rebels blamed for attack near eastern city of Goma
Fighting erupted near the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, residents and local officials said, a day after neighbouring Rwanda accused the Congolese army of shelling its territory.
Details of the unrest remain unclear, but several residents of the area around the dormant volcano of Mikeno, around 20km north of Goma, said they heard heavy weapons fire in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“A position of the Congolese armed forces was attacked,” said local civil society group leader Olivier Nzabonimpa, adding that the attack had pushed villagers to flee to Goma or across the border to Rwanda.
Boniface Kagumyo, the mayor of a nearby commune, blamed the attack on the M23 rebel group.
The M23 militia emerged out of a 2013 ethnic Tutsi Congolese rebellion that was supported by neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda at the time. M23 resumed fighting earlier this year, accusing DR Congo’s government of having failed to respect a 2009 agreement under which its fighters were to be incorporated into the army. Many in DR Congo suspect that Rwanda continues to back the group.
A senior Congolese military officer in the region, who declined to be named, said the fighting on Tuesday had claimed the lives of nine Congolese soldiers as well as 22 on the enemy side.
“We fiercely repelled the enemy’s attack, they fled towards the border to their homes,” the officer said, adding that his forces had seized Rwandan army uniforms and arms.
The fighting north of Goma comes a day after Rwanda’s army said rocket shelling from Congolese armed forces had struck areas inside Rwandan territory, injuring civilians, and called for an investigation into the incident.
The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country of 90 million people, has yet to respond to the statement.
Since the mass arrival in the vast central African nation of Rwandan Hutus accused of slaughtering Tutsis during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, relations between the two countries have been strained. DR Congo has regularly accused Rwanda of carrying out incursions into its territory and of backing armed groups there.
On Sunday, the UN accused M23 of deliberately targeting peacekeepers in the country’s troubled east.