North Kivu – praag.org

Fighting rages outside Goma

Fresh fighting raged Thursday outside the flashpoint city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the M23 rebels and regular army said, blaming each other for the new hostilities.

An army officer said rebels had attacked government-held positions on Wednesday night 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the capital of North Kivu province, sparking clashes with heavy weaponry that continued into Thursday.

The territory, near the villages of Mutaho and Kibati, has been in government hands since mid-July, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

M23 intelligence officer Modeste Bahati confirmed the renewed fighting but blamed the army for starting it by attacking rebel positions around Kibati.

“Our forces are holding their positions,” he told AFP.

The rebels accused the army of wanting to “broaden” an offensive against them.

“The absurd war relaunched by the Congolese government appears to be an outburst of anger after the failure of military-style diplomacy in these past weeks,” the movement’s spokesman Amani Kabasha said in a statement.

Kabasha accused the army of breaching “recent recommendations by the UN Security Council, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, and the SADC (Southern African Development Community) for the resumption of peace talks.”

Both sides said they were not yet able to say how many people had been killed or wounded.

The rebellion by the M23, a movement launched by Tutsi ex-soldiers who mutinied from the army in April 2012, is the latest insurgency to ravage the vast central African country’s mineral-rich but conflict-torn east.

The rebels, estimated to number about 1000, have been active in North Kivu province since May 2012. Founded by members of a previous rebel group integrated into the military under a 2009 peace deal, they left the army because they accused the government of failing to abide by the terms of the agreement.

The M23 occupied Goma – a city of about one million people and the hub around which most of the fighting has revolved for 10 days in November 2012 before withdrawing under international pressure.

The latest bout of fighting, which erupted in mid-July and has flared up periodically ever since, ended an almost two-month truce reached in May when UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited the region. – Sapa/AFP

Zuma deploys soldiers to Democratic Republic of Congo

President Jacob Zuma has informed Parliament that 1345 soldiers have been deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the presidency said on Friday.

“Our soldiers are doing exceptionally well in the continent. We congratulate them and assure them of the support of their compatriots as they continue to contribute to the building of a better Africa, as a force for peace,” Zuma said in a statement.

“We are very proud of them and their contribution to African renewal and development.”

The deployment was from June 13, 2013 to March 31, 2014. The expected cost of the deployment was R402,800,000.

The soldiers would be part of a “force intervention brigade”, under the United Nations Monusco peacekeeping force.

Zuma arrived in Luanda, Angola, on Thursday for consultations with Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and DRC President Joseph Kabila Kabange.

“The three heads of state are expected to discuss a range of issues relating to peace and stability in the region, particularly the current peace efforts in the DRC,” Zuma’s spokesman Mac Maharaj said in a statement at the time.

The SA National Defence Force said on Friday that South African soldiers in the DRC had not been engaged in armed combat with rebels in the country,

“I can confirm that… the DRC [defence] force engaged with the M23 rebels,” SANDF spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini said.

“We are in a defensive line — we are not engaging.”

He said the intervention brigade comprising of soldiers from South Africa, Tanzania, and Malawi was mandated to engage “armed groups”.

“They will not wait and watch while civilians are being attacked by armed groups,” Dlamini said.

“They will intervene to engage, neutralise, and disarm.”

On Thursday news agency Agence France-Presse reported that fresh fighting broke out outside the city of Goma.

M23 rebels attacked government-held positions on Wednesday night 20 kilometres north of the capital of North Kivu province.

Both sides said they were not yet able to say how many people had been killed or wounded. – Sapa

Many civilians massacred in Congo, say U.N. officials

Rival armed groups may have killed hundreds of civilians in massacres and other “incomprehensibly vicious” attacks in eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), senior U.N. officials said on Wednesday.

The violence is focused in North Kivu province near the border with Rwanda where warring groups have targeted villages seen as supporting their opponents, while the national army has been diverted to fight a movement of mutineers known as M23.

“The deterioration of the overall security situation in North Kivu following the M23 mutiny and related ruthless attacks against civilians is extremely alarming,” said Roger Meece, special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Meece was cited in a United Nations report issued in Geneva as saying a new round of systematic killings of villagers appeared to have occurred in early August.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said allegations of hundreds of killings were still being verified, but preliminary investigations suggested that a large number of people, mainly women and children, had been slaughtered.

“The sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension,” she said.

The Congo government in Kinshasa this month rejected calls by other countries in the region for an exclusively African force to tackle the insurgency in the east.

Congo says some of the insurgent groups have support from countries such as Rwanda and Uganda – a charge both those governments deny – and wants an expansion of the 17,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in the vast, mineral-rich state.

Pillay’s office in Geneva said its mission in Congo had recorded 45 attacks on 30 North Kivu villages since May by a group dubbing itself “Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda” or FDLR, and another called Raia Mutumboki.

The FDLR is largely composed of ethnic Hutus, many of whom fled into the Congo after the defeat of a Hutu government widely viewed as responsible for the massacre of up to a million Tutsis and opponents of its policies in Rwanda in 1994.

The movement sometimes stages attacks in alliance with another armed group, Nyatura, the United Nations says.

Raia Mutumboki is a local militia group that says it is protecting the local population. It targets FDLR members and their families, and has been linked to other attacks against people in Congo perceived to be from Rwanda.

Marie Claire Bangwene Mwavita, administrator of North Kivu’s Masisi territory where much of the fighting has taken place, said that she did not know how many civilians had died so far in the violence, but that there was a risk of growing ethnic conflict.

“I can confirm there are several armed groups operating in Masisi, but I cannot confirm that hundreds have been killed,” she said. “As the armed groups are ethnically motivated, there’s a risk (of growing conflict). But the provincial government is already organizing meetings between different communities to put an end to the problem.”

The U.N. force, known as MONUSCO, focuses on protecting civilians but has been forced to divert resources to tackle the fallout from fighting between the Congolese army and M23.

That conflict has displaced nearly half a million people since the mutiny in April led to the formation of the rebel group that accuses Kinshasa of violating a 2009 peace accord. – Reuters