The peace process in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suffered a major blow Wednesday when renegade soldiers captured a provincial capital in the volatile east of the country.
During DRC's 1998-2003 civil war the town, Bukavu, was a stronghold of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), the Rwandan-backed rebel group in which those who led Wednesday's assault held key positions.
The renegade soldiers are former rebels in the RCD, which has resisted ceding control of its former fiefdoms in the east to a post-war transition government in Kinshasa.
"The dissident troops of Laurent Nkunda and Jules Mutebusi control the town," a top official in MONUC, the UN's military mission in DRC, told AFP, asking not to be named.
Both men told AFP their forces had taken Bukavu. Clashes in and around the town have killed some 60 people over the last week.
Another MONUC source said General Nkunda, who is thought to have between 2,000 and 4,000 men under him, "was seen in the Sud-Kivu governor's residence in the Nyawera district".
Nkunda's posting in the DRC's new army is in adjacent Nord-Kivu.
"We have liberated the town," he told AFP by phone.
"I control the town of Bukavu," Mutebusi told AFP earlier in the day, before Nkunda's group advanced from a position about 20 kilometres (12 miles) to the north.
Mutebusi was suspended last month from his post as deputy commander of government forces in Sud-Kivu and ordered back to Kinshasa but refused to leave Bukavu.
"General Felix Budja Mabe is fleeing the town," he said, referring to the head of regular forces in the area.
Also Wednesday, former RCD leader Azarias Ruberwa, now a national vice president, said he "strongly and very clearly condemns" the Bukavu clashes.
Bukavu itself had been calm from Friday until shooting broke out there early Wednesday morning, although Nkunda's group clashed with regular troops every day since Sunday near the airport serving the town, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) to the north.
Between Wednesday and Friday, 39 people were killed in clashes inside Bukavu, according to MONUC. Another 20 were killed in the fighting near the airport.
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