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| Africa Subsaharan |
| UN troops fight M23 in DR Congo after four civilians killed |
| 2013-08-24 |
| [OMANOBSERVER] United Nations ...aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society... troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... went into action yesterday to battle M23 fighters after at least four non-combatants were killed in festivities near the flashpoint city of Goma, a UN front man said. Late on Thursday, shells hit the outskirts of Goma, killing a woman and a child, and a rocket struck the nearby village of Kanyaruchinya, killing two and injuring nine others. The civilians were victims of fighting that has erupted sporadically since mid-July between M23 and the regular army in a region 20 kilometres north of Goma, a city of one million people, ending a truce of about two months. Military front man Prosper Basse told UN-sponsored Radio Okapi that troops of the UN mission in the country (MONUSCO) were "henceforth engaged alongside the FARDC (regular army)" to deal with the threat. South African artillery forces in a new UN intervention brigade, authorised in March to take the offensive against armed movements, destroyed a myrmidon T55 tank stationed near Kibati, about 20 kilometres from Goma, according to the UN. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, which has committed 1,345 men to the UN brigade, met in Luanda yesterday with DR Congo President Joseph Kabila and Angola's Jose Eduardo dos Santos to discuss the insurgency. Dos Santos said the instability threatened "the peace and security of the whole region". Three months ago, MONUSCO declared a protection zone with a perimeter of 30 kilometres around Goma and the nearby strategic town of Sake "to prevent this sort of atrocity by M23 against civilian populations", front man Basse said. M23 issued a statement accusing the regular army and an ethnic Hutu movement based in the region, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), of dropping "several bombs on Rubavu district in... Rwanda and central Goma to get Rwanda and MONUSCO involved in the war". Congolese army front man Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier Hamuli said on Radio Kivu One that it was "impossible" that M23 shells could "reach Goma because its positions are too distant". A Congolese military source said that the fighting on the frontlines near the villages of Mutaho and Kibati began yesterday morning, but the sector had since calmed down. M23 is made up of Congolese Tutsi former fighters who were integrated into the army following a 2009 peace accord. They mutinied in April 2012 saying the agreement was never fully respected by the Kinshasa government. |
| Posted by:Fred |