Rebels in east Congo abduct at least six villagers
Source: Reuters
By Joe Bavier KINSHASA, May 31 (Reuters) - Suspected Rwandan rebels kidnapped at least six people on Thursday in Congo's eastern South Kivu province where 18 villagers were killed in a raid a few days ago, United Nations and army officials said. The kidnappers, believed to be members of the Hutu-dominated Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), entered a village in Kabere district, 30 km (19 miles) northwest of the provincial capital, Bukavu, around 1 a.m. local time. "They abducted five women and one man and stole some food and domestic animals," Major Gabriel de Brosses, military spokesman for the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Democratic Republic of Congo, told Reuters. A Congo army spokesman put the number kidnapped at seven. Attacks by rebels and renegade militias in eastern Congo have persisted despite the presence of the world's largest U.N. peacekeeping mission and historic elections last year which crowned a peace process ending a 1998-2003 war. Fighters known as "Rastas", an FDLR faction, slaughtered 18 sleeping villagers in nearby Kanyola district over the weekend, wounding another 22 and kidnapping around a dozen more. It was the worst such massacre in South Kivu in nearly two years. The rebel raids were apparently in reprisal for U.N.-backed Congolese army operations against the FDLR a month before. "We spoke to the villagers who saw the attackers (on Thursday). They were FDLR. They said it was a revenge against our efforts to eradicate them," said Lieutenant Ambroise Kasanda wa Kasanda, the Congolese army spokesman in South Kivu. "They vanished into the forest. Our forces are on their trail," he added. The FDLR has operated in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which Hutu militants slaughtered around 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus before being defeated by Tutsis, who now lead the Rwandan government. The U.N. Security Council voted this month to keep its 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo at least until the end of the year.
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