DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: CONG ARMY REPORT 41 GUNMEN KILLED IN EASTERN CLASHES

Record ID: 377076

  • Title: DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: CONG ARMY REPORT 41 GUNMEN KILLED IN EASTERN CLASHES
  • Date: 18th July 2005
  • Summary: (BN15) NYAKAKOMA, EASTERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (JULY 15, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. LV/SLV HOUSES BURNING IN VILLAGE OF NYAKAKOMA 0.05 2. WIDE GROUP OF CONGO ARMY SOLDIERS AROUND DEAD BODY; SLV CONGO ARMY SOLDIERS GETTING READY AS THEY HEAR GUNSHOTS BEING FIRED; SLV SOLDIERS WALKING IN VILLAGE (4 SHOTS) 0.31 3. SLV/MV LOOTED HOUSES 0.35
  • Embargoed: 2nd August 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NYAKAKOMA, EASTERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
  • City:
  • Country: Congo, Democratic Republic of
  • Reuters ID: LVACPU8BNU6LMZX6TMNVSAKWWCBU
  • Story Text: Congo army says 41 gunmen killed in eastern clashes.

    Forty-one gunmen and two government soldiers were
    killed in eastern Congo during clashes this week between
    the army, local militiamen and Rwandan Hutu rebels, a
    military commander said.

    The bodies of several attackers lay by the lake and on
    the road. Houses and shops in the village, home to 2,000
    people, had been looted and several were still burning from
    the morning's fighting. Bicycles, motorbikes and suitcases
    littered the ground.

    "We were in the house when we heard the bombs falling.

    After that, we all just fled into the forests," said
    Elizabeth Bahati a mother of five who returned to the
    village to find her house burned to the ground.

    Thousands fled into the forests but by Friday (July 15)
    the Congolese army had retaken the last of the three
    villages seized by the attackers near the border with
    Uganda, prompting civilians to start returning to their
    shelled and looted houses in search of food and any
    remaining possessions.

    Government soldiers who had retaken Nyakakoma could be
    seen loading a truck with mattresses and jerry cans on
    Friday. They said those were belongings stolen by the
    attackers and that they were taking them back to their
    rightful owners.

    Army officials in Nyakakoma said the village had been
    attacked by Congolese militiamen known as Mai Mai and
    Rwandan Hutu rebels who fled to Congo after Rwanda's 1994
    genocide.

    Two government soldiers were also killed and five
    others wounded in the fighting.

    Congolese Red Cross workers in the nearly deserted
    fishing village on the edge of Lake Edward also estimated
    about 40 people had been killed in nearly a week of clashes
    over the three villages.

    Towns caught in the middle of fighting in the Congo are
    often pillaged by one side, and then by the other.


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