 |
| UN peacekeepers in the Congo drive into their compound after patrolling the streets during mass protests against President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa last April. (Robert Carrubba/Reuters) |
Militia fighters in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo attacked a U.N. peacekeeping base on Friday, triggering clashes that left two of the fighters dead and two peacekeepers slightly wounded, the U.N. mission said.
Thirty-four rebels from a Mai-Mai militia have been killed in fighting with Congoโs army in the past week, local army spokesman Jules Ngongo said, a spike in violence he attributed to an army crackdown on the militiaโs harassment of local residents.
Fridayโs attack, in which two rebels were also wounded, was a rare frontal assault on U.N. forces charged with protecting civilians in Congoโs east, where dozens of armed groups exploit mineral resources and prey on local residents.
โVery early this morning, about 30 Mai-Mai attacked,โ mission spokeswoman Florence Marchal told Reuters, adding that U.N. forces drove off the assailants. It was not immediately clear which Mai-Mai group attacked nor what their objective was.
The Mai-Mai comprise a number of armed bands that originally formed to resist Rwandan invasions in the 1990s. They have since morphed into a wide variety of ethnic-based militia, smuggling networks and protection rackets.
Congoโs mineral-rich eastern borderlands are a tinderbox of ethnic tensions and for more than two decades have been racked by violence that has often spilled across the countryโs borders.
President Joseph Kabilaโs refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate last December has fuelled further unrest in the countryโs east, where wars between 1996-2003 killed millions, and centre, where an insurgency against the central government has killed thousands since last August.
Last week, U.N. forces in east Congoโs South Kivu province intervened with helicopters and heavy machine guns to help beat back an advance by a separate rebel group on the strategic city of Uvira.
The U.N. mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, is the worldโs largest with some 18,000 uniformed personnel and a more than $1 billion annual budget.
