DRC: Fighting displaces thousands in Mwenga, South Kivu Province

Fighting that erupted on Friday between a Mayi-Mayi militia and a Rwandan rebel group in South Kivu Province, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has resulted in the displacement of thousands of civilians, with an as-yet undetermined number of wounded and dead, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUC, reported on Monday.

"At present, we do not know if the fighting has ceased or if it continues," Hamadoun Toure, the MONUC spokesman, told IRIN in the capital, Kinshasa.

The fighting was reportedly between the Mayi-Mayi militia of Commander Nakiliba and the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) in the Ngando sector, some 10 km from Mwenga centre.

A Mayi-Mayi representative in Kinshasa said the situation was calm but tense on Monday morning.

"These people wanted to rape our women and plunder our villages, but they were met with resistance by our troops," Col Emmanuel Mapenzi, a member of the unified national military hailing from the Mayi-Mayi militias, told IRIN.

However, other sources on the ground told IRIN that the FDLR had forced the Mayi-Mayi to withdraw from Mwenga.

For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that anywhere between 2,000 and 4,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) sought refuge in Mwenga centre. Some of the IDPs were reported to be staying with host families, while others were temporarily settled in sites set up by local authorities.

OCHA said that humanitarian agencies were overwhelmed by the sudden influx, and concerted efforts were underway to respond to IDP needs.

The Mwenga region is nominally under the control of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) former rebel movement that, like the Mayi-Mayi militias, is now party to the Congo's two-year transitional national government and unified military.

Following peace accords reached in October between the erstwhile enemies, some 50 of Nakiliba's Mayi-Mayi were reported to have joined forces with RCD-Goma.

Fighting between Nakiliba's Mayi-Mayi and the FDLR had been reported earlier last week in the nearby region of Bunyakiri, resulting in widescale displacement of civilians and an unknown number of injured and dead.

The FDLR are among an estimated 14,000 foreign combatants believed to be active in the Congo. Other Rwandan combatants known to be operating in the Congo include the Interahamwe (Hutu militias) and the ex-FAR (former national military), both largely responsible for the 1994 genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in Rwanda.

On Friday, the Congolese government vowed to root out Rwandan rebels in eastern Congo in an effort to normalise relations between the two countries.

"We need to open a new chapter in terms of relations between our two countries," Mbusa Nyamwisi, the Congolese minister for regional cooperation, told a news conference in the Rwandan capital, Kigali. [see earlier story, "Congo pledges to arrest Rwandan Hutu rebels", at http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37590]