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| Africa Subsaharan |
| DR Congo rebel chief pledges to withdraw from captured towns |
| 2012-07-09 |
| [Daily Nation (Kenya)] Rebel fighters 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 or 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. It's principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... seized control Sunday of more towns in the country's east, but said they would cede most of their gains to UN peacekeepers and police. "We have seized Rubare, Rutshuru, Kalengera and Kako," said rebel leader Colonel Sultani Makenga at Bunagana, the border post with Uganda. "Even though we have taken these districts, we will withdraw and leave them to MONUSCO and national police," added Makenga, who was wearing a regular army uniform with a pistol at his hip, surrounded by around 30 well-armed bodyguards. Known as M23, the rebels are mutinous Tutsi troops who abandoned the regular army earlier this year in a dispute over pay and conditions. They said they took the Nord-Kivu province towns of Rutshuru, Ntamugenga and Rubare, less than 10 kilometres by road from the bustling provincial capital Goma, shortly after midnight. According to M23 front man Lieutenant Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the rebels faced no opposition from the Congolese army, known as the FARDC. "Our men have just taken the town of Rutshuru. On Saturday evening the FARDC came down to our position at Mbuzi. We decided to pursue them and they lost Ntamugenag, then we came down to Rubare," Kazarama told AFP. Sporadic gunfire was later heard in Rutshuru but it may have been celebratory shots had gun sex. The gains came two days after the rebels captured Bunagana, after the army led a botched offensive to try to dislodge them from their hideouts in the surrounding green hills. But according to the M23 front man and local civilians, the attack quickly turned into a defeat for the army, with 600 troops dumping weapons and supplies and fleeing across the border into Uganda. A UN peacekeeper from India was killed in the fighting. Despite pledging to withdraw from the other towns, Makenga said the rebels would keep Bunagana "because we need our enemies to be far away from our positions. "It is for the government of Kinshasa to determine if it wants peace, (or) if it wants to stop fighting us. If they want war, they will continue to attack us and we will continue to retaliate," he said. "We are not there to take the towns but to get our voices heard," he added. The government knew what their main demands were, he said: that Congolese refugees in Rwanda be allowed to return; a proper democracy and the confirmation of their military ranks they previously had within the army. On Sunday, eight armoured vehicles from the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... mission in DR Congo fled Rutshuru for a UN base five kilometres away in Kiwanja, where many local residents were sheltering in a camp for displaced people. Fighting in the resource-rich region between government troops and the rebels has intensified in recent days. The Tutsi soldiers had been integrated into the army but started defecting in April and formed M23, which is short for the March 23 Movement. |
| Posted by:Fred |