Scores die in two days of fighting in Bunia

Scores of people have died in fighting between the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) and a militia representing the Hema people, in the northeastern town of Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

"We have counted 40 dead among the soldiers, and we do not know how casualties there are on the other side," Ernest Uringi Padolo, a RCD-ML official, said from Bunia.

Residents and NGOs in Bunia reported civilians as being among the dead. Many have stayed indoors. RCD-ML said the fighting, which started on Tuesday, intensified on Wednesday, and was between Ugandan troops backing a faction of the RCD mutineers led by Thomas Lubanga, the head of the Hema militia and the RCD-ML's former "minister of defence". The latter is detained in Kinshasa, the DRC capital.

"The Ugandan troops demanded that our fighters lay down their arms, then shot at them, killing two," Kolosso Sumahili, the RCD-ML secretary-general, told IRIN.

The Ugandans, he added, had protected the Hema mutineers, who had seized the car of the area's governor. The spokesman for the UN Mission for the DRC, known as MONUC, said UN military observers were yet to file a report. "This is strictly an affair within the RCD-ML," Hamadoun Toure, the mission's spokesman, said.

During a recent visit to the area, the DRC minister of human rights, Ntumba Luaba, said three years of fighting between the Hema and Lendu, another ethnic group, had led to 20,000 deaths.