08 11 13 AFP: DR Congo's M23 rebels surrender to Uganda

The rebel
surrender follows a crushing defeat at the hands of the UN-backed Congolese
armed forces.

"He
is with our forces, yes, Makenga has crossed into Uganda," a senior Ugandan
military officer told AFP, although he declined to clarify if he had formally
surrendered or was under arrest.

Paddy
Ankunda, a colonel in the Ugandan army, told AFP that 1,500 men from the M23 —
a number thought to account for more or less the entire force — had crossed
into Uganda
and given themselves up.

"About
1,500 fighters surrendered today," said Ankunda, who is spokesman for
Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga, the mediator in stalled peace talks between
M23 and Kinshasa.
However, Ankunda said he was "not aware" if Makenga was among those
to have surrendered.

Uganda has been accused by United Nations
experts of backing the M23, claims Kampala
has strongly denied.

The
rebels' surrender puts paid to fears that they might try to fight on despite
having been outweighed by superior firepower, notably helicopter gunships.

Makenga, 39, a former colonel in the
DR Congo army, is accused of masterminding killings, abductions, using rape as
a weapon of war and recruiting child soldiers, and is on both UN and US
sanctions lists.

Congolese
troops backed by a special UN intervention brigade with an offensive mandate
launched a major assault late last month against the M23 force of army
mutineers in turbulent North Kivu.

The
region is rich in natural resources, especially gold, coltan and tin, which
have been fought over by a range of armed groups for the past 15 years.

The
Movement of March 23 (M23) was founded by ethnic Tutsi former rebels who were
incorporated into the Congolese army under a 2009 peace deal but mutinied in
April 2012, claiming that the pact had never been fully implemented.

After
briefly seizing the regional capital and mining hub of Goma last November, the
M23 entered into fresh peace talks which fell apart last month, leading the
Congolese army to go on the attack in a bid to end the rebellion.

The
United Nations and rights groups have accused the M23 of atrocities including
rape and murder in a conflict that caused tens of thousands of refugees to
flee.

Makenga
was born to parents from the Masisi area north of Goma but grew up in the
neighbouring Rutshuru district.

Like many
of the ethnic Tutsi officers who fought alongside him, he cut his teeth in the
ranks of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, now in power in neighbouring Rwanda, when it
launched its rebellion in the early 1990s.

At the
beginning of the second DR Congo war in August 1998, he took part in a daring
airlift of Rwandan troops and their allies from Goma to Kitona in the west,
which aborted after Angola
intervened.

He then
served as a battalion commander in the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for
Democracy before joining Laurent Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of
the People.

Ever
since he has been seen as loyal to Nkunda, who has spent the past several years
under house arrest in Rwanda
after he fell out with his former mentors.