GOMA, Congo—Congolese government forces are preparing to expand their military campaign in the east of the country to include another front against a local militia in addition to an ongoing fight against a renegade Tutsi general.
Congo's army has been fighting rebels loyal to Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda in North Kivu province since August, when his men abandoned a January peace deal and pulled out of mixed government brigades.
The clashes have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, operations commander of government forces in North Kivu, said on Sunday a local Mai Mai militia group, which says it is working alongside the army, was in fact hindering his plans to deal with Nkunda, and that he was now ready to act against them too.
He gave the group 48 hours to go to army integration centres and disarm or face military action.
A Mai Mai assault at the weekend on rebel-held Bunagana, a border town on Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern frontier with Uganda, triggered a series of counter-attacks by Nkunda loyalists against government troops.
The violence forced thousands more civilians to flee and wore out the army's patience with the militia group.
"I received the order to give them 48 hours," Colonel Kahimbi said, adding he was ready to act against the Mai Mai.
"With the time needed to prepare, I think we can get on with it by Wednesday morning," he said.
Former senior army officer Kasereka Kabamba, leading the Mai Mai militia group, said rejected that ultimatum on Monday, saying Nkunda's men must lay down their weapons first.
"If Nkunda chooses to go to the centres, then we go," he told Reuters by telephone.
"If we go first, he can go on killing our people."
Tinderbox
North Kivu, a vast province bordering Uganda and Rwanda, has long been a hotbed of violence in the region.
Nkunda accuses the Congolese government of supporting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), another rebel group including Rwandan ex-Hutu militia fighters and Rwandan soldiers responsible for that country's 1994 genocide.
The Mai Mai fighters under Kabamba have carried out operations with the FDLR against Nkunda.
Rwanda has twice invaded Congo in pursuit of Hutu rebels it blames for the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
The second invasion triggered a 1998-2003 war in Congo which killed some 4 million people, mostly from disease and hunger caused by the fighting.
The United Nations estimates around 370,000 people have fled fighting between government soldiers, Nkunda's rebels, local militia, and Rwandan Hutu rebels in North Kivu since the beginning of this year.
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