SAKE/GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo: Congolese troops were fighting back yesterday against rebels who rejected calls from African leaders to quit the eastern city of Goma, captured earlier this week.
Thousands of people fled the area of clashes around the town of Sake, as M23 rebel fighters rushed from Goma to reinforce their positions there against an army counter-offensive.
The rebel movement, widely believed to be backed by Rwanda, has vowed to “liberate” all of the vast, resource-rich country after taking Goma, a provincial capital on the Rwandan border, ramping up tensions in a fragile region.
The head of M23’s political arm, Jean-Marie Runiga, said the rebels would not retreat despite the call to do so from governments in central Africa, preferring to hold their ground until President Joseph Kabila opens direct talks with them. “We’ll stay in Goma waiting for negotiations,” Runiga told Reuters in the city. “They’re going to attack us and we’re going to defend ourselves and keep on advancing.”
Rebel fighters seized the sprawling lakeside city of a million people on Tuesday after government soldiers retreated and UN peacekeepers gave up trying to defend it.
The next day the rebels moved unopposed into Sake, a strategic town about 25km west along the main road. It was there that government troops and allied militia were hitting back in fighting that flared up late on Wednesday.
Regional and international leaders have been scrambling to halt the fresh conflagration in the Great Lakes, a region of many colonial-era frontiers and long a tinderbox of ethnic and political conflict, fuelled by mineral deposits.
On Wednesday, foreign ministers from the states of the Great Lakes region demanded the rebels leave Goma and halt their advance, and Kabila - in a concession to the rebels that fell short of opening talks - promised to look into their grievances.
“I’m not confident, because I’ve already waited for three months in Kampala for talks,” Runiga said of a recent spell in the capital of Uganda, which has tried to mediate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
He said M23 wanted aid groups to return to Goma, after they evacuated during the fighting. Reuters correspondents saw some aid workers driving on Thursday in the city, which is the capital of North Kivu province.
The rebellion has triggered anti-government protests in Kinshasa and other parts of the country. Opposition figures yesterday seized on it to criticise Kabila’s rule.
“Kabila is responsible for the suffering of the Congolese in Goma and in North Kivu. His leadership is weak,” Bruno Mavungu, Secretary General of the UDPS party led by top opposition politician Etienne Tshisekedi, who says he is the rightful winner of a 2011 poll that handed Kabila a second term.
Thousands of residents fled Sake yesterday as gunbattles continued. “It’s no problem, it’s just war,” Vianney Kazarama, an M23 spokesman, said by telephone, adding that the clashes had begun late on Wednesday.
Several truckloads of M23 fighters sped toward Sake from Goma as the fighting raged last afternoon. Reuters
