Fighting rages on in eastern DR Congo

“We’re on the ground. We’ve been confronting the FARDC since this morning three kilometers from Bunagana…where we were yesterday,” Vianney Kazarana, a spokesman for the rebels’ March 23 Movement, told AFP by telephone on Sunday.

“The FARDC are using combat tanks. We’re resisting. We’re at the front, we’re facing the enemy,” he said.

Earlier in the month, the mutineers, who are former members of rebel group the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), established a separate group, the March 23 Movement.

More than 10,000 people have fled to neighboring Rwanda and Uganda over the past few days.

Led by General Jean Bosco Ntaganda, hundreds of former members of the CNDP rebelled against Kinshasa last month in protest over mistreatment in the FARDC.

The CNDP was a rebel militia group that split from the FARDC. In 2009, a peace treaty was signed by the rebels and the Congolese government, which integrated the CNDP into the FARDC.

Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on for over a decade and left over 5.5 million people dead.

GJH/HN

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