Hundredtusinder er flygtet fra kampene og den bestialske vold i det afrikanske kæmpelands østlige del, men nu mener forskningsdirektør, at M23 er ved helt at miste pusten og kun råder over 1.500 til 2.500 mand under våben.
GOMA, 16 November 2012 (IRIN): Heavy fighting broke out on 15 November in the eastern part of DR Congo between the feared M23 rebels and government forces (FARDC), breaking a virtual truce (våbenstilstand) that had lasted on the frontlines between these forces for nearly three months.
M23 (The Mouvement Du 23 Mars) began in April 2012 as an army mutiny by several hundred soldiers who accused the government of breaching the terms of a March 2009 peace deal.
Under this peace deal the rebel group they then belonged to, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) became a political party while CNDP fighters joined the army.
A spokesman for the FARDC in North Kivu, Col Olivier Hamuli, said the M23 attacked FARDC positions east of Kibumba, about 30 km north of Goma, on 15 November, but were repulsed and fighting had ceased by the evening.
Local media and UN observers who visited Kibumba after the fighting were shown the dead bodies of a dozen combatants identified by FARDC as M23 members, some of whom the army said had Rwandan identity documents.
Rwanda has persistently denied accusations, repeated in two UN panel of experts’ reports on DR Congo, that it has been supporting the M23 rebels (whose armed elements in October adopted the name Congolese Revolutionary Army).
M23 accused the government of breaking the ceasefire. M23 spokesman Vianney Kazarama told IRIN that its forces had been attacked at 5am on 15 November near the Ugandan border north of Jomba, and subsequently on three other fronts.
The FARDC says at least 44 M23 fighters died in the fighting.
Is this the end of the truce?
Further hostilities seem likely in the near future.
About a week before the latest clashes a military source told IRIN an offensive involving some 3.000 government troops was expected in mid-November, and the governor of North Kivu Province, Julien Paluku, on 16 November gave members of M23 an ultimatum to surrender or be crushed.
A ceasefire had held along the main front line to the north of Goma since August, but there had been reports of M23 fighting alongside other armed groups in attacks on army bases in Masisi Territory, west of Rutshuru, every few days since 12 October.
The UN says these attacks were mounted by “presumed M23 elements”, suggesting they were guerrilla raids and the attackers were difficult to identify.
M23 has not taken control of any large population centres in these operations, which were probably intended to put pressure on the government rather than to take territory.
Jason Stearns, director of the Rift Valley Institute’s Usalama Project, in an October report on the M23 commented that with only an estimated 1.500-2.500 fighters, the movement lacked the manpower to expand its territory- se også http://riftvalley.net/resources/file/RVI%20Usalama%20Project%202%20North%20Kivu.pdf.
It is currently confined to Rutshuru, where it seized a strip of territory about 90 km north to south along the Ugandan and Rwandan borders during battles with government troops in June and July.
Can FARDC (the government troops) decisively defeat M23?
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96804/Briefing-DRC-s-M23-rebellion-under-pressure
