Gunmen attacked the airport in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s largest city, Goma, in an overnight raid in which four government soldiers and three suspected assailants were killed, a local official and a witness said on Tuesday.
A Congolese security official involved in the clashes and a Goma-based diplomat said the assailants were Mai-Mai fighters, members of one of the dozens of armed militias that control large parts of Congo’s mineral-rich eastern borderlands. Reuters reported
Residents of Goma, said they heard intermittent heavy gunfire for several hours beginning around 1 a.m. on Tuesday.
North Kivu governor Julien Paluku told Reuters, that the bandits attacked the depot at the airport and there was heavy gunfire for several hours.
Julien said that soldiers from the Congolese army’s elite Republican Guard repelled the attack and pursued the assailants from the airport, which lies on the edge of the city, into the city center where the shooting continued.
Two of the government soldiers had their throats slit, while the two others had been shot, a witness reported.
The witness also saw four men, dressed in Congolese army shirts but wearing civilian trousers, that army officials at the airport said had been taken prisoner during the clashes.
Apart from the four soldiers killed, six were seriously wounded and 10 prisoners had been taken.
-Reuters
