2010-04-05
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Dozens of unidentified fighters attacked a provincial capital in northern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday in a battle that has so far left one U.N. peacekeeper dead, U.N. officials said.

At least 30 fighters believed to be part of a mushrooming ethnic conflict in the region crossed the Congo River by boat to Mbandaka, capital of Congo's northern Equateur province, attacking the governor's residence and taking control of the city's airport in a surprise assault on Congolese and U.N. forces, a U.N. official said.

"There is heavy fighting going on right now, especially around the airport," Madnodje Mounoubai, spokesman for the U.N. mission MONUC, told Reuters by telephone. "There is one (peacekeeper) dead, Ghanaian."

He added that a U.N. contractor has also died of a heart attack during the fighting.

The Mbandaka assault is thought to be separate from an ongoing conflict between U.N.-backed forces and rebels in Congo's east and marks an escalation in the northern region, where violence erupted last year between ethnic groups over fishing access.

"We think (the fighters) are the Enyele, a group that started fighting six months ago claiming fishing rights, but now they are far from their land and we don't know what they want," U.N.'s Mounoubai said.

More than 200,000 Congolese have fled their homes in Equateur in the past six months due to the violence between the Lobala and Boba tribesmen, said aid agency Refugees International. The Enyele are a sub-tribe of the Lobala.

In Sunday's fighting, more than 100 troops from Congo's national army chased the rebels, who U.N. sources said numbered at least 30, out of town towards the airport where MONUC has aircraft stationed.

"There are many of them and they took us by surprise but we chased them and they fled to the airport," General Janvier Mayanga, operational commander for the region for the FARDC national army, told Reuters by telephone from Mbandaka.

"We have already started the counter-attack to take back the airport," he said.

U.N. peacekeepers stationed at the airport along with U.N. contractors at a fire station beside it -- both about four and a half miles (7 km) from the riverside governor's residence -- retreated into the surrounding bush.

Neither U.N. nor army sources could confirm if there were any civilians killed in the fighting, but sources in the area said hundreds were sheltering in churches after Easter Sunday services.

The attack comes as Congo seeks the withdrawal of MONUC's almost 22,000 peacekeepers by next year. Most of the MONUC forces are in the east of the country where a U.N.-backed mission to oust Rwandan Hutu rebels is taking place.

"That they have managed to overrun the capital of the province is totally unprecedented for the last few years and what's happened is very serious, especially in the context of the drawdown of MONUC," said a Western diplomat.

"No one really knows who's behind it, but the impact for the country and for MONUC is going to be tremendous."