RCD-Goma claims recapture of Fizi in east

The Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) armed opposition movement announced on Saturday that it had recaptured the strategic town of Fizi on the northwestern shores of Lake Tanganyika, some 200 km south of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), news agencies reported.

The announcement comes one month after it was reported that Fizi fell to a coalition of Rwandan and Burundian rebels aided by Congolese army officers.

"It was a long, difficult and fierce battle, but we finally kicked the enemy out of [Fizi] on Friday afternoon," Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga, an RCD-Goma spokesman, told AP. "They are now on the run in the forests, heading south toward [DRC] government-controlled territory."

Some 4,000 Burundian and Rwandan rebels and their Congolese allies reportedly fled after RCD-Goma and Rwandan forces gained an upper hand in the battle, Kisanga told AP. "They were under pressure and fled so fast that they had no time to carry with them the heavy military hardware," he said.

On 26 September, AP quoted RCD-Goma President Adolphe Onusumba as having said that "the capture of Fizi is significant because Burundian and Rwandan rebels now have an opening to mount incursions into their countries across the lake." The 7 September capture of Fizi reportedly occurred as Burundian government forces were pulling out of eastern DRC to fight rebels outside their country's capital, Bujumbura.

Although casualty figures were not readily available, the BBC noted that use of heavy artillery in the battle for the town was likely to have left a number of people dead. Humanitarian groups said up to 8,000 people fled Fizi to take refuge in the bush during the fighting, BBC reported.

The battle for Fizi, along with fighting in the town of Kindu farther northwest, comes a week before the inter-Congolese peace and reconciliation dialogue is due to begin in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 15 October. RCD-Goma has threatened to boycott the talks, accusing Kinshasa of cease-fire violations.