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Friday, Oct 19, 2012 5:00 PM UTC

Congo rebels attack in east, army pushes back

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Topics: From the Wires,

GOMA, Congo (AP) — The M23 rebel group led an attack against the Congolese army in the country’s east to gather more weapons, ending a lull in fighting that has lasted a couple of months, the group said Friday.

Group spokesman Col. Vianney Kazarama said that M23 rebels were leading the attack in Kirolirwe on Wednesday to take weapons from the army. He said that elements from a former rebel group in Congo also helped back the attack — the former National Congress for the Defense of the people, known as CNDP.

“Col. Badege was in the CNDP and we collaborated with him today. He holds strong positions around Mweso in Masisi,” Kazarama said.

The fighting lasted all day and moved towards Sake, a town near Goma, the capital of the North Kivu province. The M23 has threatened to take Goma, but has not launched any attacks there so far.

Congolese army spokesman Col. Olivier Hamuli said the army pushed the rebels back into the Virunga National Park, home to some of the last mountain gorillas. He said they are now bombing that area.

The M23 rebel group of about 1,000 fighters was created after several officers from the Congolese army defected in April and May and launched a rebellion to demand better pay, better armaments and amnesty from war crimes. It has been fighting the Congo army in the North Kivu province since, although the group has not launched attacks against the army in some months. Most of the fighters were members of the CNDP which was dismantled by a peace agreement in 2009 that saw the rebels integrated into the Congolese army.

The group has a stronghold now on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, which has helped fuel allegations that Uganda and Rwanda are backing the rebellion as arms can be easily smuggled into their territory.

On Tuesday, a leaked U.N. report accused both Uganda and Rwanda of supporting the rebellion, which both countries strongly deny.

Army spokesman Col. Hamuli suggested that Wednesday’s attack may have been meant to show that they are not backed by the East African countries.

“The M23 is trying to destabilize our positions from the inside of the territory to show that Rwanda and Uganda are not supporting them, they want to leave the border and take back their traditional fiefdom in Masisi”, Col. Hamuli said.

But he also suggested that members of the Rwandan Hutu militia, known by its French acronym FDLR, also took part in the fighting in support of M23. However, earlier this month M23 said they opened a new front in the eastern city of Rutshuru to protect civilians from the FDLR.

Congo’s mineral-rich east is facing the worst upsurge in fighting in years, which has forced some 280,000 people from their homes.

The conflict in the east is a spillover from the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Hundreds who participated in the mass slaughter escaped into Congo and still fight there. The M23 rebels are an incarnation of a group of Congolese Tutsi set up to fight Rwandan Hutu rebels in Congo.

More Melanie Gouby.

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