KINSHASA (AFP) — Democratic Republic of Congo protested to Uganda Wednesday after six Congolese nationals were killed and five injured by Ugandan troops on Lake Albert, marking the border between the two countries.
"In the face of these serious acts resulting from irresponsible and unacceptable behaviour by the Ugandan army, the (DRC foreign) ministry expresses the strongest protest of the government," a ministry statement delivered to the Ugandan embassy in Kinshasa said.
DR Congo "demands explanations from the Ugandan government" of the incident "which is not calculated to strengthen neither in the spirit or the letter" recent agreements concluded by the two neighbours.
The UN mission in DR Congo, MONUC, said Tuesday that there had been "two separate incidents" on Monday at Lake Albert, a region where oil was recently discovered.
"There was a firefight on Monday afternoon on Lake Albert in which six (Congolese) were killed and five were wounded," said MONUC's military spokesman Gabriel de Brosses.
De Brosses said the dead included a Congolese soldier, two other men, two women and a child.
According to witnesses speaking to the UN-backed Okapi radio, eight Ugandan soldiers on a motorised dinghy approached a civilian boat carrying around 40 passengers and opened fire after two Congolese soldiers aboard refused to give up their weapons.
A Ugandan army spokesman said earlier that two Congolese soldiers and one Ugandan soldier had died in a clash in Ugandan waters of the lake, involving a barge belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp.
But Heritage said its vessel was not involved.
Heritage said its vessel was "within Ugandan waters in Lake Albert in the process of lifting cables to mark the completion of a seismic survey" when a UN patrol boat detained the ship and its crew.
"This was a routine check, not hostile, and there was full cooperation. After a short interview at shore, the vessel and crew were released and returned to base in Uganda," a statement said.
The clash between border forces was a "separate, unrelated, isolated incident," it added. "No employees or sub-contractors of Heritage were involved."
The company challenged a UN official, who told AFP the oil exploration vessel was escorted out of "Congolese waters" to "avoid increasing tensions" between the two nations and "to ensure the crew's safety."
In a second episode, according to the UN, Uruguayan soldiers belonging to MONUC discovered the Heritage vessel on the DR Congo side of the lake and escorted it to a Congolese border town, according to Michel Bonnardeaux, MONUC spokesman for civilian affairs.
He said no violence occurred at that time.
The Ugandan army spoke earlier of one incident involving the Heritage vessel in which three soldiers, two Congolese and one Ugandan, had died.
Kicoco Tabaro, army spokesman for western Uganda, insisted that the vessel belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp had been on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert when it was seized and commandeered to the Congolese side.
Tension between the two Great Lakes nations has shot up since August 1 when Uganda accused DRC troops of killing a British engineer exploring for oil on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert.
Oil companies have been working in the region for many years, and last year Heritage and Australia's Hardman Resources said they had found large deposits there and would start extraction in 2009.
Uganda invaded DR Congo in 1998 during its neighbour's civil war in 1998 on the ground it was tracking down Ugandan rebels. Some Ugandan troops were accused of wide rights abuses and of plundering gold and diamonds.
Kampala and Kinshasa signed an agreement in September in Tanzania to open "joint oil exploration and exploitation" in Lake Albert.
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