Demoralised Congolese government troops in retreat before eastern rebels clashed today with their own local militia allies who tried to make them stand and fight after the armed forces chief was replaced.
Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila late on Monday sacked and replaced his military chief of staff, General Dieudonne Kayembe, in a bid to bolster the fighting capacity of soldiers who are fleeing before the well-armed Tutsi rebels.
Government troops falling back before a rebel advance on Kanyabayonga in eastern North Kivu province clashed with their own allies of the Pareco Mai-Mai militia, whose pro-government commanders said they wanted the soldiers to halt the rebels.
"We are stopping them and trying to force them back to the front. That is their job. We don't understand how they can flee when the rebels are about to come to Kanyabayonga," Pareco Mai-Mai leader General Sikuli Lafontaine told Reuters.
"These soldiers are cowards. They just flee and then rape and pillage in the cities," he added. Local residents said they saw the bodies of soldiers and Pareco Mai-Mai militiamen killed.
There was no immediate reaction from regular army commanders. Congolese troops in the combat zone complained of not being paid and of not trusting their senior officers.
The confused fighting at Kirumba and Kayna not far from the shores of Lake Edward, which witnesses said involved machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire, raged on despite intense diplomatic efforts to bring peace to eastern Congo, where weeks of combat has displaced a quarter of a million people.
Mr Kabila's government and UN peacekeepers say Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, whose fighters are waging a four-year-old rebellion in North Kivu, are not respecting a ceasefire Nkunda himself vowed to maintain in weekend talks with a UN envoy.
Nkunda and his commanders accuse the army of "provocation".
Mr Kabila named as his new armed forces head former navy chief General Didier Etumba, who had previously served as leader of military intelligence, Congolese state television said.
As aid workers struggle to help hundreds of thousands of refugees in North Kivu, many of them hungry and sick, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked the Security Council to urgently reinforce the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo.
Reuters