AFP

11/04/12

BUSURA, Rwanda — Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers clashed with Rwandan forces along a stretch of the two central African nations' border, leaving at least one person dead, military officials said Sunday.

Congolese army spokesman, Colonel Olivier Hamuli, claimed that Rwandan troops had targeted a Congolese commando on Saturday when he refused to stop after being spotted on Rwandan territory, having crossed the frontier to buy beer.

Hamuli said Rwandan troops opened fire and killed one of the commando's men. Congolese forces then returned fire and killed a Rwandan soldier, he added.

But Rwandan military spokesman General Joseph Nzabamwita said the Congolese soldiers had crossed the border to carry out a reconnaissance mission.

He said it was the Congolese troops which first opened fire and that, while one Congolese soldier was killed, the Rwandan soldier was only injured.

On Sunday, the Rwandan army, which denounced the incident as "an act of provocation" by DR Congo, took journalists and foreign military observers to the scene of the shooting, in Busura, near Rubavu in the country's west.

An AFP journalist saw a Congolese soldier's body at the site.

The zone is close to Goma, the capital of DR Congo province volatile Nord-Kivu province, where the Congolese army has been fighting a rebel mutiny led by a group called the M23 movement.

DR Congo and the United Nations have accused Rwanda of supporting the mutineers, a charge Kigali denies.

Rwanda in turn says Kinshasa is backing the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a rebel group formed by ethnic Hutus who were soldiers in the Rwandan army before being forced out after the country's 1994 genocide.

Copyright © 2012 AFP.