Congo president accuses Rwanda after city falls
President Joseph Kabila declared a “general mobilisation” across Congo after an eastern border city fell to renegade commanders, and pledged Congo’s army would protect Africa’s third-largest nation.
Kabila accused neighbour and rival Rwanda in yesterday’s takeover of the city of Bukavu, in what marked the most serious challenge yet to the fragile transition government set up after five years of war.
“The city of Bukavu is in the hands of the Rwandan national army,” Kabila claimed on state TV in Kinshasa. “Rwanda has imposed itself on us.”
Rwanda, Congo’s leading foreign adversary in the 1998-2002 war, strongly denied any involvement in the renegade commanders’ capture of Bukavu, a trading centre on the Rwandan frontier.
“What is happening in Bukavu is Congo’s internal problem, and we have nothing to do with it,” Rwandan army spokesman Colonel Patrick Karegeya said.
UN officials in the region also said they had not confirmed any Rwandan role in Bukavu’s capture.
The forces that took Bukavu are loyal to General Laurent Nkunda and Colonel Jules Mutebutsi, former Congolese rebels, once allied to Rwanda, who joined the army after the 1998-2002 war.
The war drew in the armies of six nations, including Rwanda’s, split resource-rich Congo, and killed an estimated 3.5 million people through violence, famine and disease.
In Bukavu, Mutebutsi said the government’s military commander in the region, Brigadier General Mbuza Mabe, had fled after Bukavu’s fall.
“Many of his troops have joined us. Others have shed their uniforms and are staying at their homes, and a few have fled with Mabe,” Mutebutsi said.
After a day of looting and chaos in Bukavu, calm fell by nightfall yesterday. Nkunda’s forces patrolled streets on foot and in jeeps. Others lounged around the city, which is surrounded by hills and the shores of Lake Kivu.
Amid the chaos, civilians pillaged two barges loaded with 300 tons of food aid, the UN World Food Programme said, adding that unconfirmed reports indicated that a WFP warehouse containing 1,000 tons of food also was looted.
