Six rebels wearing Rwandan army uniforms on Thursday died in clashes between the M 23 rebel group and DR Congo government troops in the country's war-torn east, a Congolese government spokesman said. Fighting between the two broke out early Thursday near the eastern city of Goma, in what a rebel statement said was a breach of an already shaky cease-fire.
DR Congo government forces (FARDC) found "six bodies of the attackers who were wearing Rwandan army uniforms at the scene", government spokesman Lambert Mende told the press. The toll could not be immediately confirmed by military officials or rebel sources. A rebel statement said that the DR Congo army launched several offensives against M 23 positions in the Rugari area, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, not far from the Rwandan border.
"The FARDC advanced to attack us (...) we must defend ourselves," M 23 military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Vianney Kazarama told AFP Thursday morning. He said the rebels would counter-attack "in self-defence". The M23 statement on the outbreak of fresh clashes reached AFP early Thursday but in a later statement in the early afternoon the rebels said that the clashes began at 7:00 am (0500 GMT). The army said they started at 8:00 am. "We did not attack them," the army's spokesman for North Kivu, Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Hamuli, told AFP.
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