DRCongo army claims key town
2007-12-05 17:24
Goma - The army in the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Wednesday it had taken control of a key hillside town from forces loyal to rebel general Laurent Nkunda.
The reversal for the cashiered Tutsi general, who claims he is defending the local Tutsis against Rwandan Hutu rebels, came as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged that Washington would bolster Kinshasa's cause.
After talks in the Ethiopian capital with DR Congo's Interior Minister Denis Kalume and leaders of other Great Lakes countries, Rice vowed to rapidly strengthen Congo's security forces in their drive against rebel and foreign forces.
Heavy clashes between some 20 000 army troops, provided with logistical support by the UN mission in Dr Congo, Monuc, and an estimated 4 000 rebel soldiers have rocked Nord-Kivu province in the east of the country since late August.
'A great victory'
The head of the army, General Dieudonne Kayembe, hailed the recapture of Mushake, for three months a key stronghold of Nkunda's rebellion, as "a great victory".
"The 82nd brigade is in Mushake and now controls all high areas around the village," Kayembe said, adding that at least 50 rebels had been killed for the loss of only four army soldiers.
In a new offensive launched on Monday, the army took back several villages from insurgents around the main town of Sake, some 30km northwest of the regional capital Goma.
The fall of Mushake, a Tutsi-dominated market town that sits on a hill west of Sake, was viewed as strategically important before the army moved north after Nkunda's forces.
"We think that we'll be able to progress northwards from Mushake," Kayembe said, adding that the army had also on Wednesday taken complete control of the nearby village of Kingi.
The first step
Observers warned that the seizure of Mushake was only a first step in what could be a long and difficult offensive.
The army on Sunday lost two key defensive positions in the north, Kikuku and Nyanzale, 100-130km northwest of Goma.
Fighting in Nord-Kivu has displaced some 370 000 people since December 2006, part of a total of 800 000 war displaced in the area.
The US recently urged Nkunda to surrender and go into exile to avoid a bloody showdown with the army, while Kinshasa has urged the general to end his rebellion and reintegrate his men into the army.
In Addis Ababa, the DRCongo government won significant political backing in its bid to rid its troubled northeast of Nkunda and other rebel groups.
In a communiqué read out by Rice, the US and Great Lakes states "committed to a rapid strengthening of the security institutions of the DRC," while also committing "again not to harbour negative forces".
Rice and the African leaders also recommitted to a November 9 deal reached by Congo with Rwanda in Nairobi which sought to balance the need to drive both Nkunda and Hutu militiamen out of the country.
'Not enough troops'
A western military observer who asked not to be named said the problem was that there were not enough government troops to take on both Nkunda's renegade forces and the Hutu rebels.
The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda has been implicated in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
In addition to Nkunda's renegade troops and the DFLR militia, the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda are also operating within Congo.
The Great Lakes heads of state present at the meeting with Rice were Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
The region has been wracked by violence since the early 1990s with the civil war that began in Burundi in 1993, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the regional war that raged in the DR Congo between 1998 and 2003.
- SAPA