re: news from back then Sick of these yet? Here's another one,...

re: news from back then Sick of these yet? Here's another one, from reuters c/o the khaleej times.

How did the ABC come up with 6 rebels that peacefully wandered in to hold a town meeting? I haven't found any references to 6, plenty around 100, just who are they citing as their source?

Congolese troops retake southern town
(Reuters)

16 October 2004


KINSHASA - Congolese forces have retaken a southeastern town from a mysterious armed group and killed 20 of the rebels, a government spokesman said on Saturday.

The gunmen took the town of Kilwa earlier this week, prompting an international company running a nearby copper and silver mine to suspend operations and evacuate some staff.

�Our soldiers went in last night and retook the town. The situation is now calm and we are fully in control,� government spokesman Henri Mova Sakanyi said. �We killed 20 of the rebels and took six of them prisoner.�

Most of the 100 to 200 rebels had fled into nearby hills, Sakanyi said.

The group�s attack caused alarm in Congo�s capital Kinshasa as reports suggested some of the gunmen could be Katangan Tigers, a feared group which fought for secession in the south in the 1960s and later fled to former Portuguese colony Angola.

Congo is struggling to recover from a five-year war that sucked in six neighbouring countries and killed three million people, mostly through hunger and disease.

Officials should know more about the identity of the gunmen once they have interrogated the prisoners, Sakanyi said.

The gunmen did not take over the nearby Dikulushi mine, according to Anvil Mining, an Australia-based firm, but operations were stopped as a precaution.