Rebels agree to hand back Bukavu скачать в хорошем качестве

Rebels agree to hand back Bukavu

(3 Jun 2004) 1. Wide of refugees crossing from DR Congo into Rwanda 2. Refugees on back of truck in Rwanda 3. Various of United Nations roadblock in Bukavu 4. SOUNDBITE (English) Sebastian Lapiere, Spokesman for the UN mission in Bukavu "We have assisted with the evacuation of over 500 people. These are people who called to say they felt threatened for various reasons and they came from different communities." 5. View of Bukavu town 6. Various of UN troops cleaning their weapons STORYLINE: Renegade Congolese leaders have agreed to end their two-day takeover of a key city by Friday, raising hopes of defusing the gravest crisis yet for the fragile post-war government of Africa's third-largest nation. APTN pictures showed United Nations peacekeepers evacuating citizens from the city of Bukavu on Wednesday. President Joseph Kabila blamed Rwanda, Congo's primary foreign adversary in the war, for the fall of Bukavu - a strategic trade centre on the two countries' border - a charge Rwanda denies. General Laurent Nkunda and Colonel Jules Mutebutsi, the renegade commanders who seized Bukavu, are Congolese Tutsi and wartime members of a rebel group allied to Rwanda. Both announced on Thursday they would end their takeover. Talks with UN officials yielded Nkunda's promise to pull out of the city by Friday, allowing UN forces to take control, Nkunda and UN spokesman Sebastian Lapierre said. Eighty UN troops with armoured vehicles were on their way to bolster the 800-member UN force in Bukavu, a UN spokesman said. Blaming the UN troops for the city's fall, residents threw stones at UN vehicles and threatened to lynch UN workers. The United Nations was withdrawing some observers from outlying posts for their security, a UN official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, UN troops opened fire on rampaging protesters in Kinshasa on Thursday, killing at least two people, as the surprise capture of Bakavu by the renegade commanders sparked the most violent protests since Congo's 1998-2002 war. At a UN logistics base in Kinshasa, mobs broke down the main door and began looting, UN spokesman Hamadoun Toure said. UN troops inside opened fire, killing two protesters and wounding one, Toure said. But it's not clear how much lasting damage the outbursts of violence in Kinshasa and the east has done to Congo's government and efforts to build a stable, peaceful country. Thursday's protests were the largest in Congo's teeming, refugee-crowded capital since at least 1997, when long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko fell, launching Congo into the 1998-2002 war. The war drew in the armies of six other African nations, including Rwanda's, and split the resource-rich country. The conflict, and the famine and disease it brought, killed an estimated 3.5 million people. The war began when Rwanda and Uganda backed Congolese rebels seeking to overthrow the post-Mobutu government of Kabila's father, Laurent Kabila. Rwanda accused Laurent Kabila's regime of failing to contain ethnic militias behind the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which targeted chiefly minority Tutsis. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...