7 militants killed in clashes with army in eastern DR Congo

Goma (DR Congo) (AFP) - At least seven militants were killed Thursday in clashes with troops involving heavy weapons in a city in Democratic Republic of Congo's restive east, police said.

The fighting erupted in the eastern suburbs of Beni, a city in North-Kivu province, with residents hearing gunshots and heavy weapons fire.

A spokesman for the country's armed forces (FARDC) told AFP the confrontation started when a new rebel group staged an early-morning attack on two of its positions east of the city, saying the gunmen were thought to be from the Mai-Mai militia.

The clashes then moved to the centre of the city, which is home to some 800,000 people, with gunmen taking up positions near police headquarters and the military prosecutor's office.

"During clashes near the police headquarters, seven attackers were killed and an eighth was seriously wounded," police chief Safari Kazingufu told AFP.

School hit

As the gunbattle continued, a shell slammed into a nearby school where teenagers were sitting state exams, wounding a teacher, an examiner and an intelligence officer, the school's headmaster said.

John Mangaiko, a representative of the fighters, blamed the army for starting the violence by bombing the group's positions at daybreak. And he blamed the military for damaging the school.

"The army bombed a school," he told AFP, saying the group did not define itself as part of the Mai-Mai, which is a "self-defence" militia comprising members of the Nande, Hunde and Kobo communities as well as rivals from the Nyaturu, who are ethnic Hutus.

Last weekend, troops clashed with suspected Mai-Mai gunmen just south of Beni in a confrontation that killed a soldier and 12 militants.

Peacekeepers from the UN's MONUSCO mission in the vast African country were also ambushed by presumed Mai-Mai gunmen, killing five of them.

Prison escapees

The army said some of those involved in both the weekend clashes and Thursday's fighting had escaped during a mass jail break on June 11 when more than 930 inmates fled Beni's Kangwayi prison.

Map of eastern DR Congo locating the city of Beni

Speaking to AFP, the city's police chief characterised Thursday's fighting as a new attempt to free prisoners.

"The attackers tried to free prisoners being held at police headquarters, at the military prosecutor's office and at Beni women's prison," he said, indicating that they had been repelled from all three sites.

North Kivu has been plagued by regular flare-ups of ethnic bloodshed which over the past year has seen a cycle of attacks and reprisal raids between Hutu and Nande militias.

For more than 20 years, eastern DR Congo has been rocked by conflict waged by both domestic and foreign-armed groups and fuelled by the struggle for control of lucrative mineral resources as well as by ethnic and property disputes.