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| Africa Subsaharan |
| DR Congo Rebels Kill Six Soldiers in East |
| 2014-05-01 |
| [An Nahar] A rebel group in the eastern 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... killed six government soldiers on Wednesday during an attack on the army and the U.N. mission MONUSCO. The attack was carried out by the Alliance for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS) in the Nyabondo area, around 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the regional hub Goma in the restive province of North Kivu. MONUSCO's military front man Felix-Prosper Basse told news hounds in Kinshasa that one member of the U.N. force and three other soldiers were also maimed. Basse accused the APCLS of opening fire on civilians during the raid, which he said forced hundreds of families to flee their homes and seek MONUSCO protection. The front man also said the U.N. and Congolese regular forces, who have for months been attempting to clear North Kivu of its myriad rebel groups, had swiftly regained the upper hand. MONUSCO gunships were brought into action to hunt down the rebels, Basse said. In mid-March, the U.N.'s special intervention brigade and the Congolese army recaptured the town of Lukweti -- north of Nyabondo -- which the APCLS had used as its headquarters for six years. The APCLS, believed to number some 500 men, was founded in early 2008, consisting almost exclusively of members of the Hunde ethnic group. Against a background of land ownership disputes, it battled against the presence of ethnic Tutsis in North Kivu, refusing to recognize their right to Congolese citizenship. Congolese and U.N. forces are also battling fighters from the ADF-Nalu, a Ugandan Islamist group, and the FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu militia that includes some of the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. |
| Posted by:Fred |