New fighting in DR Congo as PM visits

BUNAGANA, DR Congo: Mutineers and army loyalists clashed again in the jungles of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, just as the prime minister visited to assess the region’s security.
Soldiers have for months been scouring parts of Virunga National Park for ex-rebels who had joined the army under a 2009 peace deal but quit this year over poor conditions.
Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo arrived in the region on a United Nations helicopter around 1200 GMT in the Nord-Kivu town of Tshengerero, before heading to the nearby town of Bunagana on the border with Uganda.
As he arrived, the gunfire and explosions that have rattled the surrounding hillsides for weeks resumed. An AFP reporter could hear the blasts from Bunagana.
Each side accused the other of restarting the hostilities. There were no immediate casualty reports.
In Tshengerero, about a dozen women awaited the prime minister, banging tin cans and shouting: “You bring death once again to Bunagana.”
Many residents of Bunagana and neighboring communities have fled the violence and sought refuge in Uganda.
At one refugee center across the border, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refuguees says it has registered about 13,000 people.
Col. Vianney Kazarama, spokesman for the mutineers, on Thursday accused the UN’s mission to DR Congo of flying helicopters too close to the zone it occupies.
“We let them go by without any problems, but (the mission) is using our area without asking us. It’s a form of provocation, it’s serious, and it risks a reaction,” Kazarama said.
The mutineers are Congolese Tutsis and former rebels of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, who were integrated into the Congolese army under a peace agreement signed on March 23, 2009.
They began in early April to defect in large numbers from their military units in Sud-Kivu and Nord-Kivu, claiming poor treatment and demanding the full implementation of the 2009 deal on wages, food, promotions and duties.
The group’s military chief at the time of the mutiny was General Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on a war crimes charge of recruiting child soldiers.
Human Rights Watch said in a report this week that Rwanda, whose regime is largely Tutsi, was supporting the fugitive Ntaganda by allowing him to cross the border freely and providing him with weapons and recruits.
Kigali has vehemently denied the charge.
The European Union is “strongly concerned” about the ongoing mutiny, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Thursday.