After crushing M23, Kinshasa sets sights on Hutu rebels

The Democratic Republic of Congo army scored a crushing defeat of the M23 rebels but Kinshasa says it will not rest on its laurels as many more armed groups rove the volatile east.
Further fighting is already in the offing with the government vowing to eradicate Rwandan Hutu fighters, also active in the mineral-rich region, who include the remnants of the militia that carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
An offensive is "being planned, but we cannot announce it", an army spokesman for the eastern North Kivu region, Lieutenant-Colonel Olivier Amuli, told AFP today.
Government spokesman Lambert Mende said the M23 was only the first of a plethora of well-armed and organised groups in Kinshasa's sights.

"There is no more place in our country for any irregular group," Mende said Tuesday, adding: "The M23 was at the top of the list; they were replaced by the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda). We will get on with disarming them."
Kinshasa has been repeatedly accused of using the FDLR as pawns in a complex proxy war with neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, in turn accused of backing groups such as the M23.

The rebels' crushing defeat appeared to signal that the Rwandan government had finally yielded to intense diplomatic pressure and chosen to abandon its alleged proxy.

Rwanda's minority Tutsi-led government has adamantly denied supporting the M23, which was founded by former Tutsi rebels who were incorporated into the Congolese army under a 2009 peace deal which they charge was never fully implemented.
Today, at the hilltop outpost of Chanzu that was one of the rebels' last stands, soldiers and UN peacekeepers sifted through the materiel they left behind -- including olive-green rockets allegedly used by the Rwandan military.
"These are not supplied to the (Congolese army), it's Rwanda that uses this weapon," a soldier told AFP.