Fresh clashes between the DR Congo’s army and a group of mutineers erupted Sunday in the eastern province of Nord-Kivu, the defectors said, a day after fierce battles near a rare gorilla park.“We’re on the ground. We’ve been confronting the FARDC (the Democratic Republic of Congo’s military) since this morning three kilometres (two miles) from Bunagana ... where we were yesterday,” Vianney Kazarana, a spokesman for the mutineers’ March 23 Movement, told AFP by telephone.“The FARDC are using combat tanks. We’re resisting. We’re at the front, we’re facing the enemy.”The two sides have been mired in tit-for-tat clashes in the remote jungle region for weeks.The mutineers are former rebels who were integrated into the army under a 2009 peace deal but started to defect en masse, complaining of poor treatment.On Saturday, fighting broke out around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) when they attacked army positions in the Rutshuru territory near Virunga National Park on the Ugandan border, home to more than half the world’s 700 or so mountain gorillas.Kinshasa accuses former rebel leader General Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court for enlisting child soldiers, of leading the mutiny.
