Congo Alleges Incursion by Rwanda

Senior Congolese officials charged Tuesday that Rwandan troops had crossed into eastern Congo and were clashing with militias there.

Residents fleeing the fighting reported that 15 villagers were dead and three villages were burned.

United Nations officials said they were investigating the invasion charges, which came as Rwandan President Paul Kagame told his country’s parliament that Rwandan troops “might” already be in Congo, pursuing Rwandan rebels based there.

Congo’s government protested, and a Congolese Cabinet minister in the eastern town of Beni, Mbusa Nyamwisi, said there was fighting nearby.

“We are being attacked by the Rwandan troops,” he said.

Lawless eastern Congo was the scene of the worst fighting in a devastating 1998-2003 Central African war and remains home to a number of competing militias. The region is the site of frequent clashes, which residents often blame on Rwanda and its onetime Congolese rebel allies.

Villagers reaching Beni told authorities that communities north of Goma, near Congo’s border with Rwanda, had been attacked, with at least three villages burned, Nyamwisi said. They also said 15 people were killed at one village, Ikobo, he said.

Rwanda invaded Congo in 1996 and 1998 to pursue Hutu forces responsible for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, in which more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

The 1998 invasion sparked a five-year war that involved six countries and killed more than 3 million people, most of them civilians who died of war-induced famine and disease.

A series of peace deals and power-sharing accords led to the withdrawal of foreign armies and an end to major fighting in 2003.