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Fighting between the regular army and renegade troops resumed after a weekend lull in a battle for control of territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, UN observers said Monday."We're extremely alarmed by renewed clashes reported from the Ngungu zone, south of Sake," about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Nord-Kivu province capital Goma, said Sylvie van den Wildenberg, local spokeswoman for the UN mission in DRC (MONUC).Large numbers of civilians fled villages over the weekend in the Masisi and Rutshuru highlands west and north of Goma, she added, during a truce that held, apart from skirmishes, while the rival sides were busy with troop movements.The main force which took on the DRC army again in several places last week, in battles that claimed more than 100 lives, according to regular army commanders, is led by cashiered general Laurent Nkunda, a powerful local leader.Regular army chiefs could not be reached Monday for their assessment and no details of casualties in the Sake region were available, but the UN estimated that more than 650,000 civilians were now displaced in Nord-Kivu for fear of conflict.The army last year sought to deal with the threat Nkunda poses in a volatile part of a vast, war-ravaged nation by forming mixed brigades incorporating his men and their officers, which were deployed in January.But mass defections ensued once the army high command entrusted the brigades with the task of tracking down armed Rwandan Hutus from a politico-military movement established in the Kivu provinces for 13 years.Nkunda is a Tutsi, like Rwanda's minority population targeted in the 2004 genocide carried out by then Hutu troops and youth militias in the small nation across the border, and he claims one of his aims is to protect Congolese ethnic Tutsis.In Rutshuru, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Goma, pro-Nkunda Colonel Sultani Makenga late Sunday withdrew his men from the headquarters of the army's mixed Bravo Brigade and headed towards the area bordering on Rwanda and Uganda further north, where other defectors have already massed.On their way, they looted a local radio station beside the army base, making off with "the transmitter and six journalists," Beguine Uwimana, a Goma manager of the station Radio Colombe said. "Three managed to escape and get home, but we have no news of the other three."The situation in the north and south Kivu provinces and in Ituri further to the north seriously concerns both the Kinshasa government and the MONUC mission that has stayed on since the end of the 1998-2003 DRC war to oversee and help in last year's elections and the restoration of stability.Troops from MONUC-which weighs in as the world's largest and most costly UN peacekeeping force with more than 19,000 personnel-have battled Nkunda's men in situations such as a post-war attack on the Sud-Kivu province of Bukavu, where the general contended that Tutsis were being slain.MONUC helicopters have overflown the region for days and reported big troop movements by both sides. In November 2006, the "Nkundists" attacked Sake, which was the last notable town on a route to Goma, before being driven back by UN forces.A Western regional analyst who asked not to be named said Monday that "there is a serious risk of endangering Goma and Sake", since though "the situation on the ground remains rather confused", the regular army appeared to be moving into Masisi and north Rutshuru, leaving south Rutshuru and border areas.The military command last Thursday also announced the deployment of brigades to replace the mixed ones and hunt down the exiled Hutu rebels, amid warnings from both Nkunda's side and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda that any escalation would lead to conflict.
As in the days of Noah...
