Bukavu tense

The situation in the eastern DRC town of Bukavu was described as tense on Thursday after a weekend grenade attack and several confrontations between students and soldiers, sources told IRIN. In the clashes with Rwandan soldiers and soldiers of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) on Tuesday, the sources said the students were demanding the release of four civil society leaders detained the day before. The sources told IRIN Gervais Chirhalwirwa Nkunzimwami, Paulin Bapolisi Bahuga, Aloys Muzalia Wakyebwa, and Regine Mutijima Bazalake, had initially been sent to RCD headquarters in Goma for questioning before being transferred to Kisangani “for their own safety”. The accusation against them was that on Monday they had allegedly defamed RCD-Goma and its Rwandan ally by alleging in a in Radio France Internationale (RFI) report that Rwandan soldiers were responsible for the grenade attack. Eight people were killed and dozens wounded in the attack on Saturday at a trade fair at the Bralima brewery. The RCD blamed the grenade attack on the Interahamwe and Mayi-Mayi movements in collusion with civil society groups in order to create insecurity in the town. The RCD has also accused the four detainees of having been nominated by President Kabila to his new Constituent Assembly. However, they were not known to have participated in its proceedings. In a subsequent development, a source in Bukavu has told IRIN that two young people were assassinated in the town on Wednesday night. One of them was the son of Zagabe Nyamulinduka, a well-known personality in the DRC capital, Kinshasa.