[Al Ahram] Congolese soldiers fought rebels in the country's volatile east for hours Saturday, officials said, while a rocket landed inside the town of Goma and killed three people as border tensions escalated between Rwanda and Congo.Scores of angry residents erupted into the streets of Goma in protest following several days of violence that has left at least seven dead and dozens maimed in this city of nearly a million near the Congo-Rwanda border.
Congo immediately blamed the rocket attack on neighbouring Rwanda, which has long been accused of supporting the eastern Congolese rebel movement known as M23.
"We wonder, for how long will the international community continue to tolerate these offenses?" Lambert Mende, a front man for the Congolese government, told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
Rwanda, which has vigorously denied allegations by the United Nations
...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships...
and others that it has provided support to the M23 rebels fighting the Congolese government, also accused Congolese forces of attacking Rwanda. The Rwandan army said mortar fire landed in several villages along the border Friday.
Brigadier Joseph Nzabamwita, a front man for Rwanda's military, said "acts of provocation that endanger the lives of Rwandan citizens will not remain unanswered indefinitely."
The M23 rebel group briefly took Goma last November and subsequent peace talks in neighbouring Uganda have repeatedly stalled. M23's leaders previously headed other rebel groups in the region that were backed by Rwanda. The rebel group is made up of hundreds of Congolese soldiers mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group who deserted the national army last year after accusing the government of failing to honour the terms of a deal signed in March 2009.