Fresh fighting near camp forces thousands to flee

Congolese Tutsi rebels and government troops fought near a refugee camp in east Congo on Friday, forcing thousands of civilians to flee in panic.

Congolese and UN military officers said the two sides exchanged machine gun, mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire near Kibati in Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province, where 250,000 people have fled recent fighting.

Thousands of refugees streamed back along the road towards the North Kivu provincial capital Goma, 7 km to the south.

The clash occurred as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met African leaders at a summit at Nairobi in Kenya to try to end the conflict in eastern Congo.

The fighting in North Kivu between Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and government troops backed by militia allies has raised fears of a repeat of a wider 1998-2003 war in the vast, mineral-rich former Belgian colony.

Meanwhile, Nkunda said on Friday that a regional Great Lakes summit would not end his rebellion in east Congo, unless it could convince President Joseph Kabila to negotiate directly with him.

“It’s only a regional summit. It doesn’t have any impact on our demands,” Nkunda told Reuters by telephone from his hilltop headquarters in east Democratic Republic of Congo, where his Tutsi rebels have battled government troops.

Nkunda said Friday’s summit in Nairobi would only influence him “if they can convince Kabila to come back and negotiate with us”.

Nkunda has not been invited to the summit in Nairobi which seeks to end the conflict in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo before it engulfs the whole region.

One of the key issues leaders meeting in Kenya need to resolve for a lasting solution to the festering conflict is the presence in eastern Congo of Rwandan Hutu rebels who took part in the 1994 genocide.

Over the past four years there have been various ceasefires and agreements to disarm all militant groups in the region, but little progress has been made on the ground and there have been frequent campaigns by Nkunda.

He justifies his revolt as a legitimate one to protect ethnic Tutsis in Congo from the Hutu rebels, known as the FDLR, and says he wants talks with Congo’s President Joseph Kabila.

The region is also rich in minerals, such as coltan, which is used in mobile phones, making control of the remote terrain, far from Congo’s capital Kinshasa, lucrative. Rwanda denies supporting Nkunda and accuses Congo of backing the Hutu rebels in the east.

While the leaders wrestle with their entrenched political differences, calls for more peacekeepers in the region are growing around the world to prevent a humanitarian disaster.