Congolese army claims attack by Rwandan troops

[October 29, 2008]  KILIMANYOKA, Congo (AP) -- Bombs, rockets and mortar shells exploded in volatile eastern Congo on Wednesday, and the Congolese army claimed it was attacked by troops from neighboring Rwanda.

The bombardments, heard by journalists at an army camp, appeared to be taking place less than five miles (eight kilometers) from a village where thousands of refugees have sought protection from rebels who have advanced through the area toward Goma, a city of 600,00 people 20 kilometers (13 miles) to the south.

Jeeps carrying officers sped along the road early Wednesday, stopping to give instructions to soldiers carrying rocket launchers and assault rifles.

Neighboring Rwanda's Tutsi-led government denies Congo's accusation that it has sent troops across the nearby border to help the fighters of renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda, who says he is fighting to protect the region's tiny Tutsi minority.

Nkunda has threatened to take Goma, the provincial capital, despite calls from the U.N. Security Council for him to respect a cease-fire brokered by the U.N. in January.

The United Nations has 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo -- the agency's biggest mission in the world -- trying to halt the rebellion and protect the local population.

But as the rebels have advanced in the past two days, U.N. tanks have retreated along with government troops. U.N. helicopter gunships fired rockets at the rebels to try to impede their advance Monday and Tuesday, but are hampered because rebels are using civilians as shields, U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg says.

The top U.N. envoy to Congo said late Tuesday that the peacekeeping force is stretched to the limit with the upsurge in fighting and needs more troops quickly from wherever it can get them.

Envoy Alan Doss said a temporary troop increase through the United Nations is needed "tomorrow, but I don't think that's likely to happen." That leaves the possibility of an outside force coming in to help for specific purposes for a limited period, he said.

Alain Le Roy, the U.N. peacekeeping chief, told reporters late Tuesday after briefing the U.N. Security Council that diplomats shared "a sense of urgency" and seemed receptive to sending additional battalions and other reinforcements to shore up the U.N. force.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, expressing deep concern about the violence in eastern Congo, said he has been talking to the country's President Joseph Kabila and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame and has sent senior advisers to both countries.

"Now first and foremost, this fighting must be stopped. I'm deeply concerned about this civilian casualties and increasing number of internally displaced persons," he said in Manila, the Philippines.

Doss said Tuesday that government soldiers some 45 miles (70 kilometers) from Goma, on one of four fronts opened by the rebels, fired on civilians and trapped foreign aid workers trying to escape the town of Rutshuru. He said peacekeepers were forced to "respond," apparently meaning they shot at the soldiers who are supposed to be their allies.

Aid agencies said Tuesday their workers could hear bombs exploding as the rebels closed in and angry and frightened civilians and soldiers blocked their evacuation by U.N. peacekeepers.

The mob was looting humanitarian centers and the belongings of about 50 trapped aid workers at Rutshuru, a strategic town north of Goma, said Ivo Brandau, a spokesman for the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA.

Brandau said tens of thousands of civilians are fleeing that town, heading north and east toward the Ugandan border. Rutshuru had a population of about 30,000 residents and the same number of refugees.

Doctors Without Borders said its doctors and nurses trapped at Rutshuru Hospital had treated 70 war wounded since Sunday but most patients had fled the hospital.

The rebels also are fighting around Rugari, a town between Goma and Rutshuru, as well as northwest of Goma around Sake -- using several fronts to scatter government forces and U.N. peacekeepers.

The violence in eastern Congo has been fueled by festering hatreds left over from the Rwandan genocide and the country's unrelenting civil wars.

Nkunda charges that the Congolese government has not protected his minority Tutsi tribe from a Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping carry out the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Half a million Tutsis were slaughtered.

Nkunda's ambitions have expanded since he launched a new onslaught on Aug. 28 -- he now declares he will "liberate" all of Congo, a country the size of Western Europe with vast reserves of diamonds, gold and other resources. Congo's mineral wealth helped fuel back-to-back wars from 1997 to 2003.

The U.N. says more than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last two months, joining 1.2 million displaced in previous conflicts in the east.

[Associated Press; By MICHELLE FAUL]

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