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Congolese soldiers flee

July 6, 2012

About 600 Congolese soldiers have sought refuge in Uganda after intense battles with rebels. The retreat comes days after fighting between the Congolese army and M23 rebels intensified in Congo’s lawless east.

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Congolese soldiers carry weapons and mortar equipment on the road to the town of Bunagana.
Image: dapd

Ugandan army spokesman Captain Peter Mugisa said the soldiers did not want to go home, fearing they might be massacred by the rebels they were sent to fight.

Also, a UN soldier from India was killed in clashes between rebels and Congolese troops along the Ugandan border, the United Nations said Friday. The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) said the peacekeeper was fatally wounded by shrapnel during the fighting.

"It wasn't a direct hit. He died from his wounds," MONUSCO spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai said.

Congolese forces launched an offensive on July 5 to rout the rebels known as M23 from Virunga national park, home to one of the largest populations of mountain gorillas in the world. But M23 repulsed the offensive and took the border town of Bunagana, M23 lieutenant colonel Vianney Kazarama said.

Democratic Republic of the Congo topographic map with capital of Kinshasa and Goma locator
Fighting between Congolese forces and M23 is focused near the town of Goma and Virunga national parkImage: AP

"The mutineers took control of the entire town. The entire population and the (Congolese) troops are in Uganda," a police source in the area said separately.

The fighting in the resource-rich region has pitted government troops against former Congolese Tutsi rebels, who were integrated into the army but defected earlier this year and formed M23.

The rebels, holed up in Nord-Kivu province near the borders with Rwanda and Uganda, are led by Bosco Ntaganda, a warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes. They say they mutinied because of poor conditions in the army.

The 7,800-square-kilometer (3,012-square-mile) Virunga national park, created in 1925, is the oldest in Africa and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. It is home to about a third of the world's mountain gorillas, of which there are less than a thousand.

A Congolese soldier displays a mortar round
A Congolese soldier displays a mortar round. Fighting with rebel group M23 has intensified in recent daysImage: dapd

The ongoing violence in the region has displaced more than 200,000 people and driven 20,000 refugees into Rwanda and Uganda.

The group Global Witness, which tracks links between conflict and natural resources worldwide, has said M23 leader Ntaganda and other senior figures of the movement had "amassed huge sums of money through the trade in conflict minerals."

In earlier clashes, M23 claimed to have taken the towns of Jomba and Chengerero, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) north of their position on the road to the border crossing with Uganda.

bm/mz (AFP, AP)