Government troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have claimed a major victory with their announced penetration of rebel lines and the occupation of a strategic town. The railhead town, Kalemie, lies to the north of Katanga rovince and on the shores of lake Tanganyika. This area, some 1,500 km east of Kinshasa and near the provincial borders of South Kivu, Maniema and Kasai Oriental, forms the south-eastern front of the rebel war which began last August.
"Thousands of Ugandan, Rwandan and Burundian soldiers have begun to desert their positions in Kalemie", President Laurent Kabila's aide-de-camp, Maj Eddy Kapend, said in Lubumbashi, the capital of Katanga.
Military officials in Kinshasa say the Congolese and their allies from Zimbabwe, Angola and Chad have managed to woo MaiMai tribal militias to their side in Kivu province. The Mai-Mai, who number around 15,000 to 20,000, are virulently opposed to the presence in their areas of troops from Rwanda, who, together with soldiers from Burundi and Uganda, back the rebels in the DRC.
On May 11th the Congolese chief of staff, Gen Faustin Munene, predicted his men would win the war in the east "within just a few weeks", claiming to enjoy "a clear advantage on the ground" thanks largely to "the logistical problems of the invaders".
Congolese and allied aircraft, including assault helicopters, have caused "much damage" to rebels along the central front trying to reach the country's "diamond capital", the town of Mbuji-Mayi, the military officials said.
In Harare yesterday, a Zimbabwean military spokesman claimed Mr Kabila's allies had inflicted heavy casualties on Ugandan, Rwandan and rebel troops in eastern DRC in the past week.
He added that large quantities of military hardware had been captured after the enemy retreated in disarray.
The southern African forces - from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia - had also launched air and ground attacks on enemy columns in the area between Kabinda and Lubao, killing close to 80 soldiers, the spokesman said. In the Kabalo area, they had destroyed an enemy defence line.
A battle to control Mr Kabila's home village of Manono, some 200 km south of Kabalo, was continuing, "with the allied forces clearing the remnants of enemy pockets to completely push the enemy out of the area".