Now rebels withdraw from Bukavu, MONUC takes over

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), known as MONUC, has taken control of security in the volatile eastern Congolese city of Bukavu after leaders of dissident army troops agreed to withdraw their men, a senior UN official said on Friday.

"UN forces are going to increase patrolling, right now we have redeployed inside the town," Brig-Gen Jan Isberg, the UN commander in charge of the provinces of North and South Kivu, said.

He said the UN redeployment would defuse a crisis that had threatened to plunge the Congo back into civil war.

"MONUC has verified that withdrawal has begun and there’s still movement of troops out of town," Isberg said.

Gen Laurent Nkunda, one of the renegade commanders, told IRIN that he had already ordered 300 of his soldiers out of Bukavu and was in talks with UN peacekeepers to have them take control of the town.

"Our forces are pulling out as we speak," Nkunda said. "We want to show loyalty to the transitional government."

A group of Congolese refugees at the border between Bukavu and Rwanda's Cyangugu Province, awaiting transportation by the UNHCR

Nkunda and Col Jules Mutebutsi, formerly with the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Goma and who were briefly commanders in the new Congolese army, seized Bukavu on Wednesday. They had complained that the regional military commander assigned by the government, Brig-Gen Mbuza Mabe, was persecuting one of the ethnic communities in the region, the Banyamulenge.

Meanwhile, in Rwanda's western province of Cyangugu, Congolese refugees continued to arrive on Friday, fleeing the fighting in Bukavu.

A field officer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Fabien Nsengiyumva, told IRIN that 2,200 Congolese refugees had so far registered with agency, but only 905 of them were staying in a designated camp. He added that the rest were staying with friends and relatives in Cyangugu.

"We are now working on expanding the camp to accommodate more refugees crossing over," he said.