Rebels and the army fought one of their fiercest battles in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo this year on Thursday, exchanging machine-gun and mortar fire all day outside a national park that is home to some of the world’s last mountain gorillas.
UN-funded Radio Okapi reported at least four people were killed and several wounded. At least one of the dead was an army soldier, it said. The UN mission told the British Broadcasting Corp that 18 rebels were injured.
Despite a January ceasefire deal, rebels led by Laurent Nkunda fought army units in the village of Matebe, as well as Gasiza and Kalomba, both located on the outskirts of Virunga National Park, UN spokesman Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich said.
“Almost the entire population of the area has fled,” Dietrich said, adding that army forces had put attack helicopters into the skies and were reinforcing their positions.
Army spokesman Colonel Delphin Kahimbi confirmed the army was organizing a counteroffensive. He blamed rebels for starting the latest conflict. Rebels could not be reached for comment.
Nkunda’s fighters have occupied the southern sector of gorilla-inhabited Virunga National Park for about 12 months, keeping rangers from patrolling the area.
Emmanuel de Merode, who directs Virunga National Park for the Congolese Wildlife Authority, said in a statement that the “latest escalation of the conflict undermines our efforts to resume our work in the gorilla sector.”
“It is almost one year to the day since this conflict started, but we are as determined as ever to get back in,” Merode said, adding that mortar and grenade explosions have boomed around the park since before dawn.
“It is critical that we know the status of the mountain gorillas,” he said.
Though sporadic gunfights have broken out in North Kivu province this year, much of the area has been calm since a January peace deal ended a wave of major skirmishes in the same region late last year.
Congo held its first democratic elections in more than four decades in 2006, and is still coping with the effects of a 1998-2002 war and Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, which saw millions of hungry refugees spill across the border. Most people remain deeply poor and desperate, and the gorillas in the Virunga reserve are competing with local villagers for land.
Only about 700 mountain gorillas remain in the world, an estimated 380 of them in a range of volcanoes straddling Congo’s borders with Uganda and Rwanda.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS