By Finbarr O'Reilly
Kinshasa - Fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is tearing open a bloody front in a long-standing ethnic conflict in Africa's Great Lakes region.
The battle for Bukavu was triggered by politicised disputes over a national Congolese army formed under a peace deal to end one of Africa's worst ever wars.
But the past week's fighting was essentially an extension of an ethnic struggle between Hutus and Tutsis.
Age-old rivalries at the heart of Africa have sporadically spilled over into bloodletting in Burundi, eastern Congo and most infamously Rwanda's 1994 genocide, where Hutus massacred some 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
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"It is a unique situation - it's not a country-based war, it's an ethnic conflict," said Jan van Eck, Great Lakes conflict analyst at South Africa's Institute of Security Studies (ISS).
"It's like having cancer in four organs of your body. There's no one solution to solving the conflict in four different countries," he said, also referring to Uganda, the region's fourth state involved in years of fighting in Congo's blood-soaked east.
The bitterest national enmity is between Congo and Rwanda's Tutsi-led government, which twice invaded its massive neighbour, in 1996 and 1998, accusing Congo of not doing enough to control Hutu militia known as Interahamwe who fled to eastern Congo's mountains and jungles after leading the 1994 genocide.
Years of warfare have polarised the two governments on opposite sides of the Great Lakes ethnic fault line, with both supporting proxy fighting forces in the conflict in eastern Congo, where local ethnic Tutsis are known as Banyamulenge.
Rwanda backed Congo's main RCD-Goma rebel movement in a five-year war that officially ended last year leaving three million people dead, mainly from hunger and disease. It was Banyamulenge RCD fighters who captured Bukavu on Wednesday, accusing the army commander in the area of targeting their kin.
It is not clear if all government troops there were ethnic Hutus, but their anti-Rwandan, anti-Tutsi stance was clear.
Congolese President Joseph Kabila accused Rwanda of helping the renegades. Rwanda denied it, but warned that if Banyamulenge were targeted during an attempt to retake the border town, Rwanda would "play its role in opposing genocide".
Analysts say any conflict in the area is complicated by the area's mineral riches, which include gold, diamonds and coltan and were a major draw for occupying forces in the war.
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