NAIROBI (AFP) — Renewed fighting between the army and renegade troops in the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo poses a fresh threat to critically endangered mountain gorillas, experts said Sunday.
A resurgence in clashes between regular soldiers and troops loyal to cashiered Congolese general Laurent Nkunda has forced rangers to flee the Virunga National Park, the gorillas' habitat, officials said.
"A few rangers returned ... on Friday in an attempt to start locating the mountain gorillas, but were forced to flee after further attacks by armed groups," said Samantha Newport, spokeswoman for Wildlife Direct, a charitable animal welfare organisation led by Kenyan conservationist Richard Leakey.
"The only mountain gorillas found were the five members of the Rugendo family, the remains of the unit that was massacred in July, and they were outside of the park vulnerable to crossfire. Rangers have yet to locate other families," she added.
Virunga park official Norbert Mushenzi expressed concern over the fate of the gorillas, of which only about 700 remain in the wild in the mountains of Rwanda, Uganda and the eastern DR Congo.
"Our rangers tried to go back in but had to escape again. It is imperative that we get into the sector to check on the mountain gorillas. They have been exposed for nearly a week to fighting," Mushenzi said.
Nine mountain gorillas have been killed and two were still missing in Virunga National Park since January. Of the nine, five were shot dead at point-blank range on July 22 by armed men and their bodies left on the spot.
The deaths, some blamed on Nkunda's men, have outraged conservationists.
After two were slaughtered and eaten in January, the renegade troops pledged to halt the killings in a meeting with Virunga park officials mediated by the United Nations mission in DRCongo and the Congolese army.
More than 150 rangers have been killed in the last 10 years while protecting five parks in the country's east.
The mountain gorillas are a major tourist attraction in the park but poaching remains endemic.
"We thought the situation was calming a couple of days ago, but once again the mountain gorillas are in peril and the rangers cannot do their job," said Wildlife Direct chief Emmanuel de Merode.
"Conservation in DR Congo is consistently challenging and we can only hope the mountain gorillas survive this most recent saga," de Merode said.
Nkunda's rebels and other armed groups are accused of poaching there and encroaching on their habitats.
Conservation group WWF and the International Center on Conflict and Negotiation ICCN have provided maps of the park's boundaries to the UN to help ensure that people displaced by the fighting do not encroach into the park as was the case during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the WWF said in a statement.
Some 224,000 people have been displaced by fighting in Nord Kivu province this year alone, according to the UN.
Local and foreign militias as well as Congolese soldiers, poachers and illegal miners regularly cross the Virunga park, one of Africa's largest, and a UNESCO world heritage site. Sometimes they occupy parts of it.
Nkunda is a Tutsi, like Rwanda's minority population targeted in the 2004 genocide carried out by then Hutu troops and youth militias in the smaller nation across the border, and he claims one of his aims is to protect Congolese ethnic Tutsis from Hutu militants.
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