At least 24 soldiers die as troops withdraw from DRC

At least 24 Rwandan soldiers were killed at the weekend in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as the Rwandan army continued its withdrawal under a peace accord signed in by both governments in July, news organisations reported.

A senior Rwandan army officer said on Monday that 20 of the soldiers died when a mortar bomb exploded in the truck taking them back to Rwanda, the Associated Press reported. The other four died when Interahamwe militiamen ambushed troops near the eastern town of Uvira. They were the first casualties since the pull-out began.

Rwanda began withdrawing its estimated 20,000 troops earlier this month, in line with the 30 July peace accord signed in South Africa. Under that deal, to end a four-year war in the DRC, Rwanda agreed to withdraw its troops within 45 days, while the DRC agreed to disarm and repatriate thousands of Rwandan Interahamwe militiamen and ex-soldiers who fled to the DRC in 1994, after their genocide of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus.