Thousands of civilians have fled their homes after clashes in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said Friday, although it was unclear who was behind the violence.
Diplomats in the Great Lakes region said Rwandan troops pushed briefly into the vast Central African country early this week to hunt down Hutu rebels, some of whom took part in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
“Instability in the area means we don’t have an exact number, but one NGO [non-governmental organization] estimates 46,000 people are hiding in the forests of Pinga and Walikale,” Jahal de Meritens, head of the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Congo, or OCHA, said in a statement.
He told reporters that it was very hard to tell which groups were involved in the clashes, but he said they appeared to involve rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR.
“The fighting is between FDLR and a very organized, disciplined and well-equipped contingent, meaning these are the 8th military region [of Congo’s army] or the Rwandan army. But Rwanda says it is not there, and we have not seen them,” he said.
Rwanda signaled intentions
Rwandan President Paul Kagame wrote to the U.N. Security Council and the African Union last month saying he planned to send troops into Congo, raising fears of new conflict in a region where 4 million people have died in genocide and from war-related hunger and disease over the past decade.
“They’ve had people on the ground for a targeted and surgical operation and brought them back,” a diplomat in the region said, without elaborating.
Richard Sezibera, Kagame’s adviser on Congo, repeated government denials that any troops were currently inside Congo but would not say whether soldiers had crossed the border briefly earlier in the week.
“All of that is speculation. You can write what you like. But I cannot comment on speculation,” Sezibera said.
Congo’s upper house said Rwanda had made a declaration of war by sending its troops over the border.
“By carrying out his threats, President Kagame is not only deliberately breaking all non-belligerence accords signed with our country ... but he is also making an actual declaration of war,” Congo’s senate said in a statement.
Attacks on villagers
The U.N. mission in Congo said Thursday that it had compelling evidence that Rwandan soldiers had entered the country, which is almost 90 times the size of Rwanda.
Rwanda has already invaded Congo twice in the past decade to attack rebels based there, including some of the Interahamwe Hutu militants who took part in Rwanda’s genocide a decade ago.
“We have to get rid of these people [the Rwandan Hutu rebels]. They have been causing trouble in this country for 10 years,” said Aldo Ajello, the EU’s envoy to the Great Lakes, said at a news conference in Kinshasa. “The only way to do this is to help the Congo have an army that can deal with them.”
A diplomatic source in the region said it appeared as if the Rwandan operation, believed to have been 12 to 20 miles inside Congo, had scattered Rwandan Hutu rebels and a variety of irregular Congolese armed groups, as well as triggering the displacement of civilians.
The movement of those armed groups had led to clashes between them and also to attacks by various factions on villagers, the source said, adding that there appeared to be no basis as yet for reports by Congolese officials that it was the Rwandan troops that had attacked civilian targets.
“We heard gunshots. The Interahamwe fled and [Rwandan] soldiers killed civilians. The bodies have not been buried yet. They looted the village before burning it. We fled into the forest,” a displaced person was quoted as saying by OCHA.
Sezibera, speaking by telephone from Rwanda, said: “I cannot comment on speculation about an incursion, but the one aspect I can comment about these reports is that the reports of killing and looting and burning has nothing to do with Rwandan troops.”
Mbusa Nyamwisi, a Congo government minister with business links to Rwanda’s regional rival Uganda, said Tuesday that Rwandan troops and their Congo allies had burned villages and raped women 100 miles north of the eastern city of Goma.
