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6-day-old DRC ceasefire broken
28/01/2008 16:55 - (SA)
Kinshasa - Congolese Tutsi rebels and Mai Mai militia clashed on Monday in the Democratic Republic of Congo, breaking a ceasefire signed last week aimed at ending a long-running conflict in the east, the two factions said.
Tutsi fighters loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and Pareco Mai Mai militia, who had both signed a peace accord on Wednesday, blamed each other for the fighting early on Monday near villages 70km west of the town of Goma.
Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and the Pareco Mai Mai faction were among 25 armed groups which had agreed to an immediate ceasefire in Wednesday's peace deal. The pact followed more the two weeks of negotiations.
"This is a serious violation of the ceasefire that we've just signed," Seraphin Mirindi, a military spokesperson for Nkunda, said on Monday.
Pareco Mai Mai spokesperson Theophile Museveni blamed the attack on Nkunda's CNDP group.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo, which is trying to create buffer zones between the rival eastern factions as part of the ceasefire accord, said it could not confirm who had launched the first attack on Monday.
- Reuters
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