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'Rwanda' Forces Advance

The Monitor (Kampala)
NEWS
June 12, 2003
Posted to the web June 12, 2003

By Frank Nyakairu & Agencies
Kampala
Rwanda using fire-throwing planes in DRC Rebels capture town near Uganda
The Rwandan army has attacked targets in DR Congo using helicopters equipped
with flame-throwers, a local bishop has told AFP.
Bishop Melchisedech Sikuli also said on Tuesday that he feared a "devastating
attack by the RCD-Goma (Rwandan-backed rebel force based in Goma) and its
allies" in the region.
He said that the RCD-Goma had brought in three battalions for the assault.
He said that he was alarmed by the damage this would inflict on the local
civilian population, whose numbers are swollen by tens of thousands fleeing
ethnic fighting further north in the Ituri region.
"From 8 June the APR [Rwandan army - now Rwanda Defence Force] and the RCD-Goma
attacked the areas of Kanyabayonga, Miriki, Alimbongo, Mbingi and Bunyatenge
using three helicopters equipped with flame-throwers," the bishop of Butembo-
Beni said.
Says Frank Lusambo, the rival RCD-Kisangani official in Kampala: "They
[Rwandans] used the helicopters again on Tuesday at midday when we attempted to
retake the town."
But the spokesman of the Rwandan army Maj. Jill Rutaremara told The Monitor
that no Rwandan forces are fighting in the DR Congo.
"We do not have any soldiers in those areas mentioned and we don't have any of
our helicopters fighting with the RCD forces," Maj. Rutaremara said.
"That is a smear campaign by Mbusa Nyamwisi's people [RCD-Kisangani]," he said.
The offensive comes a week after the UN monitoring body, MONUC, pulled all its
peacekeepers from the area.
On Tuesday the RCD-Goma rebels said they had seized Kanyabayonga, which lies
near the Ugandan border, from another rebel group allied to the Kinshasa
government.
Bishop Sikuli also said in a letter to the Vatican Radio that the "attacks were
launched simultaneously on Sunday at 5 a.m. by thousands of RCD soldiers on
Kanyabayonga and on the main road between Lubero and Goma, causing panic in the
heavily populated villages and towns of the region."
Mr Roger Nzama Kilundo, the head of the Civil Society of North Kivu
Association, told the AFP that he could confirm the bishop's report of attacks
involving flame-throwers.
He added that a further helicopter regularly brought supplies to the RCD rebel
positions and did so in the full view of the observers from MONUC.
"MONUC, despite its omnipresence in this country, does not condemn the acts,"
Mr Kilundo said.
The MONUC said that it had withdrawn its military observers from Kanyabayonga
on 3 June after two observers were killed there.
The UN estimates that 2.5 million people have died either directly in combat or
indirectly through disease and malnutrition in the DRC conflict that broke out
in August 1998.
At its peak, the war drew in troops from Angola, Namibia, Chad and Zimbabwe on
the government side as Rwanda and Uganda supported different rebel groups.
A peace deal between the warring factions was signed in South Africa in
December and formalised in April.

   

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