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At least 19 militias and one South Sudan army (SPLA) soldier died on Monday, when the two forces clashed in Pibor County of South Sudan’s Jonglei State, the military said.
The incident in Linkwangule Payam [district], according to the SPLA’s spokesperson, started on Monday night, when a group composed of about 50 militias loyal to renegade David Yau Yau, stormed a United Nations compound in Linkwangule, and requested them to evacuate the area before 10AM Tuesday.
Rebel fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo have threatened to march on the capital, Kinshasa, after capturing the eastern city of Goma.
The M23 rebel commander told a crowd in Goma they were ready to topple President Joseph Kabila.
The rebels have also taken a small town near Goma, which is on the road to the region’s other main city, Bukavu.
Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have entered the main city of Goma in the mineral-rich east of the country, according to a reporter on the scene.
A column of rebel fighters entered the city from the main airport road on Tuesday, sweeping past government troops, and moved toward the centre.
The development marks an escalation in the fighting, which erupted last week after a four-month lull and which has raised fears of a wider conflict engulfing the volatile region.
Rwanda accused U.N.-backed Congolese forces of shelling its territory during a battle with rebels near the border on Monday but said it had no plans to respond militarily to what it called Kinshasa’s “provocation”.
Tension between the central African neighbors has stretched to the breaking point over an insurgency in Congo’s eastern hills that Kinshasa’s government says is orchestrated by Rwanda with designs on the region’s mineral riches.
“Rwanda does not intend to respond to provocation coming from the DRC,” Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told Reuters. “Issues in (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo) are too serious to be subjected to game playing.”
A Rwandan-backed rebel group has advanced to within two miles of Goma, a crucial provincial capital in eastern Congo, the first time rebels have been so close since 2008. The advance came despite the deaths of 151 rebels and two army officers in fighting that culminated in a series of attacks by UN helicopters on rebel positions in eastern Congo on Saturday.
A Congolese army spokesman, Colonel Olivier Hamuli, said the fighting around Goma started at 6am on Saturday. He denied reports that Congolese soldiers were refusing to fight and fleeing.
Clashes erupted again between the army and M23 rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the restive region where fighting has been flaring all week, the two sides said.
“Early this morning they attacked,” said Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Hamuli, an army spokesman. “We’re in the middle of fighting at the moment.”
A spokesman for the rebels, Colonel Vianney Kazarama, confirmed that fighting broke out early in the morning, adding that the army “attacked us with helicopters and tanks.”
Malian Tuareg MNLA rebels launched an offensive to retake the strategic region of Gao in northern Mali on Friday, waging battle against the Islamist rebels who seized the region in a bloody battle against the MNLA in June.
New fighting Friday and a crackdown on women for not wearing veils by Islamist militants in the Malian city of Timbuktu marred peace moves by two of the groups controlling the desert north who said they were ready for peace talks with Bamako.
A Tuareg warlord said his National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) had launched an “offensive” to retake the key north-central region of Gao from Islamist rebels.