KINSHASA (AFP) — Rebels charged Friday that a Hutu militia they say is allied to government forces is heading to an area of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo that the rebels evacuated earlier this week.
The rebels said the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which have been in DR Congo since the end of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, planned to join forces with the Mai-Mai militia, also allied to the government.
"FDLR are descending on the town of Kinyandoni where they want to reinforce a Mai-Mai front," said Bertrand Bisimwa, spokesman for renegade general Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
The CNDP unilaterally withdrew from around Kinyandoni in the northern part of strife-torn Nord-Kivu province this week as a show of goodwill toward peace efforts by UN special envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria's former president.
The rebels had urged the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUC) to take over security in the area they evacuated, which is 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of the regional capital Goma, to prevent another force from occupying it.
Nkunda says he is defending fellow Tutsis against the Hutu militia, whose members are accused of participating in the Rwandan genocide that killed 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis, according to UN figures.
More than 250,000 people have been displaced since fighting erupted in eastern DR Congo in August.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
