Rwandan armed groups and their sympathisers are running around in circles, after news started filtering out that the self-styled Lt Gen Sylvestre Mudacumura, the commander of the FDLR militia and his close aides, had been killed by Congolese soldiers.

It is also believed that the president of the rebel group, Victor Byiringiro, escaped narrowly and is on the run in the jungles of Eastern Congo.

Unconfirmed reports also indicate that another Rwandan armed group, RUD-URUNANA, a splinter group of the FDLR, fled its jungle headquarters at the last moment as Congolese soldiers were closing in.

Incidentally, there has been no show of satisfaction from the usual givers of lessons that the head of an organisation that had sowed terror in Congo for decades was no more.  The new Congolese administration has started to clean the house and needs all help it needs, even if it is just moral support.

Incidentally, some mainstream French publications that always portray themselves as experts on everything Africa, media houses that have the powers to sway French public and government opinion, got it all wrong. Or was it intentional and for what motive?

When they splash their headlines of the death of Mudacumura with photos of a former Congolese rebel leader, Gen Bosco Ntaganda, what is the message?  That the person in the photo is the one who died and not THEIR Mudacumura?

They know very well that Ntaganda has been on trial at The Hague for the last few years so it was no innocent mistake. But if they wanted to raise the morale of FDLR supporters, they should at least have chosen a more subtle tactic because what they did clearly shows whose side they are.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com