Four more rebel soldiers have died from wounds sustained in a bombing raid on guerrilla-held land in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, bringing the toll to 528, a rebel leader said yesterday.
The four died on Thursday. Civilians bore the brunt of Wednesday's attack by a Sudanese Antonov bomber backing the government of the Congo President, Mr Laurent Kabila, which bombarded two small fishing villages along the Congo River, rebels claimed.
Mr Kabila's government has denied responsibility for the raid, which threatens an already shaky ceasefire deal brokered by Zambia to end the year-old war.
The Zambian Presidential Affairs Minister, Mr Erik Silwamba, was to meet rebels in Congo yesterday to try to shore up the deal.
Mr Jean-Pierre Bemba, who leads the rebel Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), said that more than a dozen bombs hit a market and a rebel military position in Makanza, about 800 km north-east of the Congo capital Kinshasa.
"They hit a concentrated market in Makanza full of fishermen, where a lot of people died," Mr Bemba said from his base in Gbadolite, on the border with the Central African Republic.
"We had also put our soldiers in trenches along the river. We had a big battalion stationed there and they hit us."
Mr Bemba said other bombs had fallen - with no reported casualties - in nearby forests.
He said most bodies were buried on Wednesday and Thursday in individual graves by friends and relatives who have started to trickle back home.
The attack came days after Mr Bemba signed a ceasefire accord agreed upon last month by six African states involved in the war including Rwanda and Uganda, who back the rebels, and Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, who back Mr Kabila.
Sudan has consistently denied involvement in the conflict and did not sign the peace agreement. The main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), failed to sign because of an internal leadership dispute.
"It is just a silly allegation . . . it is just a fabrication, Mr Nasreldin A.M. Idris, Sudan's ambassador to South Africa, said. "Why [blame Sudan]? Kabila and his army have Antonovs. It [the Antonov] is widely used by African armies," Mr Idris said.
Mr Bemba said the alleged attack meant his group would not honour the ceasefire pact it signed on Sunday to end its military campaign to oust Mr Kabila.
The main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, has not signed the agreement, which was endorsed last month in the Zambian capital Lusaka by the six governments involved in the yearlong conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Sudan has maintained all along that it is not involved militarily in the war, a position reiterated by Mr Idris, who said his government was only giving the embattled Kabila regime political and diplomatic support. Mr Bemba gave no details of the air attack on Bogbonga, a town on the opposite side of the Congo River also reportedly hit. Mr Kabila's troops are positioned about 25 km to the southwest, toward the regional capital of Mbandaka, he said.