Nine Hutu rebels have been killed in a joint military drive by Rwandan and Congolese troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, reports said Sunday.
Almost 4,000 Rwandan troops on Tuesday entered DR Congo under an agreement with the Congolese government to hunt down Hutu rebel forces formed after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, dpa reported.
General John Numbi said the joint forces had engaged Hutu rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in five villages 200 kilometres north of Goma, the capital of the restive North Kivu province, the BBC reported.
Numbi said that nine rebels had been killed and one Congolese soldier injured.
Rwanda on Thursday also surprisingly arrested its former ally Laurent Nkunda, the leader of Tutsi rebel group the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), DR Congo's main rebel force.
A CNDP offensive late last year routed the Congolese army and sent more than 250,000 people fleeing.
Some analysts feel that the arrest of Nkunda, who fought with Rwandan President Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) during the genocide, was part of the deal that allowed Rwandan troops to enter DR Congo.
Rwanda, the darling of the donor community, has been under international pressure to stop backing Nkunda, and several Western nations in recent weeks withdrew development funding from the Rwandan government.
The Rwandan government has been keen to put an end to the FDLR and has previously launched operations against the group.
The Congolese government promised to tackle the Hutu militia on several occasions, but has failed to do so. The CNDP said this failure was one of the main reasons it was forced to take up arms again.
Many of the Hutu fighters fled over the border from Rwanda in 1994 after taking part in the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and formed the FDLR.
Nkunda has been taken to Kigali, but there is as of yet no word on whether Rwanda will bow to DR Congo's request to extradite the rebel general.
