By
Sylvain Muyali
Shots from heavy weapons and machine guns were heard early Tuesday morning in the villages of Ruvuye and Mulindi, overlooking the town of Lemera, Uvira in the Democratic Republic of Congo province of South Kivu.
Sources of the 33rd Military Region indicate that these shots marked the official start of the FARDC‘s ‘Sukola 2’ military operation against the Rwandan FDLR rebels in South Kivu.
It has also been reported that the Congolese army have regained control of the camp at Revo which housed the Rwandan combatants. This camp is located about 30 km from the city of Lemera, with military sources stating that the rebel troops were in disarray in the bush.
The Commander of operation ‘Sukola 2’ against the fighters of Rwanda, General Hoping Masudi, is on site in Lemera for these operations. According to local sources, the Congolese military have been deploying various ways in which to bring out the Rwandan FDLR combatants, supposedly harboured in Lemera.
The Congolese army announced in January the start of operations against the FDLR, though the fighting had not started at that point. The armed forces of the FARDC are conducting these operations alone, without the support of MONUSCO, the UN mission having suspended its support to the Congolese army for these operations as a result of the presence of two generals suspected of serious human rights violations.
After this announcement, the head of the Congolese state informed the ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa that DRC was no longer using MONUSCO in the disarmament operation against the FDLR.
By living in the DRC, the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister for Cooperation and Development, Alexandre De Croo and his colleague for Foreign Affairs, Didier Reynders, expressed the wish to see Kinshasa regain the support of MONUSCO in tracking down against the FDLR in the east of the country.
