Clashes Erupt for 2nd Day in E. Congo
Rebels Battle Militia As Thousands Flee; Wider Truce Holding
Rebels loyal to Laurent Nkunda run toward pro-government Mai Mai militiamen in Kiwanja, where yesterday's fighting was centered.
(By Jerome Delay -- Associated Press)
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Thursday, November 6, 2008
KIWANJA, Congo, Nov. 5 -- Sporadic gunfire and explosions echoed through this town in eastern Congo on Wednesday as rebels fought pro-government militiamen for a second day, forcing thousands of people to flee.
A wider cease-fire between the rebels and the government was holding farther south around the provincial capital, however, as diplomats prepared to assemble a regional peace summit Friday in Kenya.
In Kiwanja, 45 miles north of the main city of Goma, clashes erupted Tuesday between rebels and a militia known as the Mai Mai, but the violence eased Wednesday afternoon. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda accused Congo's army of firing mortars toward rebel positions from behind militia lines and said ethnic Hutu Rwandan militias linked to Rwanda's 1994 genocide were fighting alongside the Mai Mai around Kiwanja.
The army could not be reached for comment.
Nkunda said the army had also taken part in fighting Saturday in two other towns in the region, Mweso and Kashuga.
"This morning they wanted to advance . . . but our forces fought them back," Nkunda said. "They were very well armed."
Associated Press journalists who visited Kiwanja at midday saw several thousand people on the roads, including mothers with babies on their backs, trying to find safety. As rebels loyal to Nkunda searched houses, artillery fire boomed in the hills nearby, and rebels told the reporters to leave.
In the nearby village of Mabenga, a Belgian journalist working for a German newspaper was kidnapped by the Mai Mai late Tuesday along with his assistant and three rebel fighters, according to local official Gilles Simpeze. He said the government was negotiating their release.
On the edge of Kiwanja, hundreds of people took shelter at a roofless, abandoned school beside a U.N. base manned by Indian peacekeepers. The soldiers, in blue helmets and flak jackets, crouched behind sandbags and a ring of concertina wire.
The United Nations "should open up their gates to protect us," said Ntaganzwi Sinzahera, 30.
But soon after, Sinzahera and everyone else at the school left, joining a large crowd of refugees streaming toward the adjacent rebel-controlled town of Rutshuru.
"Tonight we don't know where we're going," said Omar Issa, 21, who joined the crowds leaving Kiwanja. "I didn't bring anything. We don't have any food."
