Fighting breaks out in Bukavu

Two people were killed on Wednesday after fighting broke out in the eastern town of Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), between soldiers loyal to the Kinshasa government and renegade soldiers of a former Rwandan-backed rebel group in the country, a UN official told IRIN on Thursday.

The public information officer for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Sebastien Lapierre, said in Bukavu that the two, who were in military fatigues, had been found dead in a market in central Bukavu late on Wednesday. He said a civilian was also seriously wounded.

"I presume that the number of casualties could be bigger as heavy gunfire is still going on. We have had several reports of civilians wounded by stray bullets," he said. "There's a lot of sporadic shooting at the moment and the population has kept indoors."

Business in the town has ground to a halt as a result of the fighting, which began on Wednesday night.

In Kinshasa, the DRC capital, the MONUC spokesman, Hamadoun Toure, said: "The fighting in Bukavu broke out when fighters under the command of Mbuza Mabe Nkumu took on a group of fighters loyal to Col Jules Mutebusi, a former RCD-Goma [Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Goma] regional commander who was trying to go to Rwanda."

Mutebusi's fighters were formerly loyal to RCD-Goma, which has since joined the transitional government installed in Kinshasa in June 2003.

In Bukavu, Mutebusi accused his "enemies" of attempting to arrest, disarm and take him to Kinshasa. "I am defending myself, because the Kinshasa soldiers brought here want to kidnap me and hand me over to Kinshasa," Mutebusi said. "I do not want to be killed in Kinshasa."

Lapierre said the UN was trying to contact both sides in an attempt to get them agree to a ceasefire.

Regional military commanders have been appointed by the DRC government as part of efforts to unify the troubled vast Central African nation, but the move has met with resistance from renegade rebel soldiers reluctant to relinquish their previous positions.