Former rebels continue to return from Congo

Thirty-seven rebel fighters arrived on Tuesday in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, from Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), aboard two planes of the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC. The arrival of the former rebels, loyal to the Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces de defense de la democratie (CNDD-FDD) faction led by Jean Bosco Ndayikengurukiye, follows Moday's arrival of 53 others, loyal to Pierre Nkurunziza's CNDD-FDD, who were also escorted home by MONUC officials. MONUC is repatriating former combatants under its disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation (DDR) programme aimed at ridding the DRC of all armed foreign groups. A MONUC political adviser, Ibrahima Dia, told IRIN that Ndayikengurukiye requested that his fighters be repatriated and sent to cantonment sites prior to demobilisation. "We worked with Ndayikengurukiye, the Burundian army and the African Mission in Burundi to identify these combatants and to group them," Dia said. He added that they were repatriated after MONUC had obtained all the required information about the former fighters. He said they came with 10 guns packed in cases in conformity with UN rules, as they could not travel with weapons. He said 479 rounds of ammunition were destroyed in Lubumbashi by MONUC and Congolese authorities kept the remaining weapons. "We have a document asserting that the remaining weapons were not given back to combatants," he said. The returnees said that by coming home, they were implement the ceasefire agreements signed by their leaders. "It is a great joy to come back home after fighting in Congo for six years," Arthemon Nzitabankunze, one of the returnees said. He added that they hoped to join the country's integrated armed forces after their cantonment. Nzitabankunze, who was a commandant in Ndayikengurukiye's CNDD-FDD, said some 150 former combatants were still in the province of South Kivu, eastern DRC. "There are no more combatants in Katanga region [northeast of DRC]," he said. "The remaining are in Kivu, at Uvira there are 50 combatants, in south Uvira there are 100." The returnees were taken to an assembly point at Buheka, in the southern province of Makamba where they will join some 800 former combatants who are already assembled, Ndayikengurukiye added. The former fighters loyal to Nkurunziza who were repatriated on Monday had also been based in eastern Congo. MONUC officials say it is difficult to establish exact figure of Burundian former combatants still present in the DRC.