Rebels overrun DR Congo army base

18/11/2008| IslamWeb

Rebel fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo have overrun a government army base despite their leader's pledge to respect a ceasefire and engage in UN-backed peace talks.

The renewed offensive comes as France presented a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on Monday, seeking a "temporary increase" of 3,000 military and police personnel to bolster UN forces already in the country.

The UN force, in place since 2001, is already the largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world, with 17,000 soldiers.

Some 5,000 of them are deployed in eastern Congo, where the fighting intensified in recent weeks between the government forces of Joseph Kabila, the Congolese president, and rebel forces loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general.

Draft resolution

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, had been urging the security council to beef up its presence in eastern Congo, where the fighting has created a humanitarian crisis.

Members of the 15-nation council and Ileka Atoki, the Congo's UN ambassador, said last week that there was broad agreement to increase the force, and council diplomats said they expected a quick vote, probably this week.

But UN officials and diplomats have cautioned that even with 3,000 additional troops and police, the force would have great difficulty fulfilling its mandate of protecting civilians because Congo is the size of Western Europe and North Kivu, where the current fighting is centred, is 1 1/2 times the size of France.

Highlighting that difficulty, UN peacekeeping troops at Rwindi stayed at their base as fighting between rebels and the army continued nearby on Sunday despite a ceasefire.

Rebels extend territory

Government troops abandoned their position late on Sunday at Rwindi, 130km north of Goma in DR Congo's Nord-Kivu province, after a battle with the rebels involving small arms and heavier weapons, witnesses said on Monday.

Rebels loyal to Nkunda have continued to push north and extend territory under their control in North Kivu province despite a ceasefire agreement.

A peace initiative launched at the weekend by Olusegun Obasanjo, the UN special envoy and former Nigerian president, is aimed at ending weeks of fighting in North Kivu, which has displaced a quarter of a million civilians.

Obasanjo also met Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame in a bid to stop the conflict from escalating into a repeat of the 1998-2003 Congo war that killed several million people.

A UN peacekeeper at Rwindi, who declined to be identified, told the Reuters news agency Nkunda's National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) forces had started advancing against government troops on Sunday.

"At 7pm, there was firing from both sides ... small-arms fire and long range heavy calibre weapons passing over our base in both directions ... By morning, the CNDP was here," he said.

The road into Rwindi was littered with military boots and blankets.

In the town, a ranger post for the Virunga National Park, rebel fighters manned checkpoints abandoned by the army.

To the north, sporadic gunshots rang out that peacekeepers said were probably fired by hungry soldiers poaching animals.

"Both sides were shooting for hours. The children were traumatized ... The UN soldiers were hiding in their trenches but we had to remain outside," said Clement Augustin Kasabuni, 33.

"There were more than 100 bombs that fell last night. What kind of ceasefire is that?" he asked.

Nkunda is demanding direct talks with Kabila on Congo's future, something the president has so far refused to grant.

A Congolese official told Reuters on Monday that Kabila's government would only negotiate with the rebel leader if he agreed to return to a January peace deal he abandoned on the grounds that it was one-sided and manipulated by the government.

A UN official said the retreating Congolese government soldiers at Rwindi destroyed ammunition and a rocket launcher by setting them on fire, causing explosions and rockets to fire in the direction of UN peacekeepers, wounding one.

Rebels have collected large amounts of military hardware abandoned by the weak and chaotic Congolese army.

Court-martialled

On Monday, a military court sentenced four government soldiers to life in prison for looting.

One of them was found guilty of war crimes, including rape and looting, in a court martial open to the public in the capital of Nord-Kivu province.

Three other men were convicted of abandoning their posts in time of war and misuse of weapons during looting, while a fifth was given a six-month sentence for shooting and wounding a civilian.

The defendants went on the rampage while they were guarding the home of the regional Congolese military commander, General Vainqueur Mayala.

Three other soldiers also accused of looting were acquitted.

 Both the Congolese army and the rebels have been accused of war crimes and other acts of violence against civilians.

PHOTO CAPTION

People displaced by violence in the North Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo try to obtain identity cards and register to be counted as Internally Displace People (IDP's) at the Kibati IDP camp on November 15, 2008.

Al-Jazeera