Rangers flee gorilla reserves
2007-09-07 15:24
Kinshasa - Rangers and residents fled a gorilla reserve in eastern DRC on Tuesday as battles between government forces and those of a renegade general overwhelmed sections of the park, said officials.
Sporadic clashes had disrupted densely forested area bordering Uganda and Rwanda since Thursday, after fighting re-erupted between the DRC's army and former general Laurent Nkunda's troops.
DRC army officials claimed that at least 150 rebel fighters had been killed. Army colonel Delphin Kahindi said that figure included 67 bodies found abandoned on Monday after a helicopter crash, along with nearly 100 insurgents killed last week.
Nkunda's representatives were not immediately available for comment. The United Nations said on Monday that it could only confirm six deaths since Thursday.
Troops seize 3 gorilla monitoring posts
By early on Tuesday, as many as 10 000 Congolese refugees had crossed into western Uganda in less than 24 hours, said Ugandan officials.
UN refugee officials also reported that thousands of Congolese had fled their homes in the east to other parts of the DRC. Some reported cases of rape and killings of civilians by armed men, said the UN refugee officials.
Nkunda's troops seized three gorilla-monitoring posts in Virunga National Park Monday and park officials said rangers vacated another post on Tuesday, abandoning the part of the park, where the gorillas lived.
The Frankfurt Zoological Society's Robert Muir, who worked with the park, said fleeing rangers said that government troops were battling Nkunda's men on Tuesday in the heart of the sector inhabited by the endangered mountain gorillas.
He said: "They have abandoned the gorilla sector, because it is swamped with Nkunda's men and is a very difficult place to be right now." Muir said rangers continued to man posts in more distant areas.
Only about 700 mountain gorillas remained in the world, about 380 of them in the Virunga area that crossed DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, according to conservationists. About 100 of them were believed to live on the DRC side of the park.
Rangers evacuated
Nine mountain gorillas had been killed in attacks this year in eastern DRC, according to conservation group Wildlife Direct.
Park officials said more than 300 people who worked with the gorillas had been evacuated, including rangers and their families. One park ranger was shot and killed on Thursday in a separate patrol post attack, said officials.
About 250 000 villagers had also been forced out, said Muir.
Little information was available from the area as radio and cellular antennas had been taken out, along with a hydroelectric dam that provided electricity in the area, he added.
Nkunda said on Monday that his forces were only fighting defensively, and argued that he had not abandoned a peace process started earlier this year.
According to Nkunda: "Today, like all the other days, we did not attack. But we were attacked."
Nkunda had accused the Kinshasa-based government of attacking his forces to provide a reason to end negotiations. Army officials had said Nkunda was resisting attempts to integrate his troops into the regular army.
On Friday, the UN sent an additional 200 peacekeepers to the area along with an extra company of army troops. The UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African country was the world's largest, with about 18 000 troops.
- AP