REBELS IN the Democratic Republic of Congo pushed on with a fresh offensive yesterday, a day after their leader said he would observe a ceasefire.
Another day of heavy fighting dispelled any faint hopes of a quick end to war.
The potholed road from Rwindi was filled with trucks carrying villagers away from a fresh rebel assault towards the regional capital Goma, some 75 miles to the south.
Dozens of villages emptied during the attack that began on Sunday morning, just as Gen Laurent Nkunda was telling a United Nations peace envoy that his rebels were ready for peace. Those fleeing pointed the finger as his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
“The war between the CNDP and the government came to us yesterday morning,” said Alphonse Kayenga, sitting atop crates of fish in the back of one truck heading for safety. We heard the guns and the explosions so we prepared to leave. It was the CNDP that started it.”
He had left the village of Vitshumbi as government soldiers fell back to positions there. His family packed as many possessions as they could into baskets woven from straw. Bedrolls and bicycles were tied to the truck.
More than 30 people sat precariously above their possessions as they began the slow drive towards Goma, where the government has been strengthening its defences.
A week after the last major clashes, it was a reminder that the DRC’s confused web of conflicts will not disappear overnight or even five years after its bloody civil war ended.
On Sunday Gen Nkunda, who claims his forces are protecting the region’s ethnic Tutsis, met Olesugun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian president now acting as a UN envoy, and insisted he was observing a ceasefire. However, his public pronouncements have rarely matched reality. Yesterday, a statement issued by the United Nations Mission to the DRC, known by its French acronym Monuc, confirmed the rebels had launched an offensive on Sunday.
“Monuc condemns these violations on the ground and invites the parties to respect the ceasefire so as not to further worsen the humanitarian situation,” it said.
Aid agencies continue to warn of a worsening humanitarian crisis with some 250,000 people forced from their homes by the fighting.
The eastern portion of the DRC should be the bread basket of the country. Its fertile soil and plentiful rain bring rich harvests of maize, beans, cabbages as well as valuable cash crops of coffee. But yesterday aid trucks trundled along its dirt roads with food needed for the displaced.
This region, around the borders with Uganda and Rwanda, has not seen the peace enjoyed elsewhere since a five-year civil war ended in 2003. Its rich resources – including a third of the world’s tin ore – and the attentions of neighbours have kept conflict simmering.
Many suspect Rwanda has been backing Gen Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels as a means of securing mineral reserves. Those allegations were dismissed by Rwandan president Paul Kagame yesterday.
“It’s either exaggerated or distorted to imply that Rwanda is holding a switch that will switch off Nkunda or that Rwanda initially switched him on,” he told a news conference in the capital Kigali.
Repeated denials have done nothing to end persistent suspicions that the eastern part of the DRC is once again the battleground for other people’s wars.