Nairobi/Goma - Congolese rebels have overrun a protected area for endangered mountain gorillas, forcing out rangers and making them unable to track the primates, leaving them open to attacks by armed militias, a conservation group said Monday. WildlifeDirect, a group which works to protect the world's 700 mountain gorillas, said fighting between the forces of dissident general Laurent Nkunda and the Congolese army threatens to affect the 72 gorillas in the country's Virunga National Park.
"We have absolutely no idea what is going on with the mountain gorillas in the Congo and it is a critically endangered species," said Samantha Newport, spokeswoman for the group.
Some 10 mountain gorillas, including one last month, have been slain since the start of the year, and with the animals left unmonitored, conservation groups fear they may be harmed or killed.
"This is a human conflict that is involving the mountain gorillas. They are not a target, but can so easily get caught in crossfire and shelling," Emmanuel de Merode, the head of WildlifeDirect, said.
Fighting between Nkunda and the national army erupted in August, with the former claiming he is trying to protect members of eastern Congo's ethnic Tutsi population, called the Banyamulenge, from attacks by Hutu militias who have links to the perpetrators of neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
The Congolese government has rejected negotiations with Nkunda, who refuses to integrate his forces into the regular army.
Eastern Congo has long been a cauldron of simmering tensions as militias, often allied along ethnic lines, fought for control of territory in the resource-rich region.
A 1998-2003 war in eastern Congo engulfed the region, pulling in seven neighbouring nations and killing an estimated 4 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.
