One of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) main rebel military chiefs denied late on Monday that Laurent Nkunda, head of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), had been toppled by a dissident group.
A group of CNDP officers had told the BBC on Monday that they had dismissed Nkunda for ”poor leadership”, adding that the decision had been taken on Sunday during a meeting of the rebels’ military command.
But Colonel Makinga Sultani, number two in the military leadership, told Agence France-Presse: ”Laurent Nkunda is still chairperson of the CNDP. There has not been any leadership change in the movement, the power in CNDP still rests with Nkunda,” who has headed the Tutsi rebel movement since it was set up in 2006.
Meanwhile, Ugandan rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have launched a pair of fresh attacks in north-eastern DRC, but left no casualties since the targets were deserted, an official said on Monday.
The LRA attacks took place on Sunday against a protestant mission and a small village, deputy governor of Orientale province Joseph Bangakya told Agence Frence-Presse by telephone.
In both cases, he said, almost everyone had fled before the rebels arrived.
Two days previously, the rebels clashed with Congolese government forces in a national park in the north-east of DRC in the latest bout of fighting since Kinshasa launched a major joint operation against the LRA with south Sudan and Uganda in mid-December.
Blamed for widespread human rights violations over the years, the LRA group has most recently been accused of killing hundreds of civilians in DRC — at least 400 according to aid group Caritas — during the Christmas period.
Tens of thousands of people have also been killed and nearly two million displaced in Uganda in two decades of fighting between the LRA and Ugandan government. — AFP
