Goma,Congo

GOMA, Congo: The UN Security Council decided on Thursday to send 3,100 further peacekeeping troops to Congo, while insurgents said they remained dedicated to a recoil from the front lines in spite of an army assault.

There are presently 17,000 peacekeepers in the vast Central African nation the world’s largest UN peacekeeping mission but they have been not competent to stop the hostility. On Thursday, rebels said they had fended off an attack from the army, pro-government Mai Mai militias and Rwandan Hutu rebels.

Rebel spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa said their troops were attacked in Katoro, a small village close to Kiwanja, about 70-km north of Goma. Rebels fended off the attack after two hours “and the condition is now peaceful,” Bisimwa said. He said rebels were still committed to keeping their troops pulled back from front lines further north, but warned: if the UN peacekeeping force “is not able to keep quiet in this area …we’ll go and attack these groups who are trying to take control of that area.”

The reported attack came a day after the UN confirmed that hundreds of rebel forces had pulled back from three front lines in eastern Congo. UN peacekeeping spokesman Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich had called the move “a positive step.”