NAIROBI, KENYA — Hundreds of Rwandan troops crossed into Congo early Tuesday as part of a joint military operation to crack down on rebel militias that have been destabilizing the Central African giant for more than a decade.
It is the second time in a month that Congolese President Joseph Kabila has made a controversial decision to invite foreign troops onto his nation's soil to help restore security in eastern Congo. Last month, Ugandan and southern Sudanese troops entered the Democratic Republic of Congo to attack hide-outs of the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel movement.
The latest campaign appears to be targeting a Rwandan rebel army that also had sought refuge in Congo's dense jungles. The Hutu militia, known as Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, is accused of seeking to overthrow Rwanda's Tutsi-led government.
The FDLR, which finances itself by illegally exploiting Congo's mineral riches, was founded by Hutu extremists who fled Rwanda after orchestrating the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people died.
Early Tuesday, 1,500 to 2,000 Rwandan troops crossed the border and began making their way toward the town of Rutshuru, north of the regional capital of Goma, where they were expected to join Congolese troops with tanks and other heavy equipment, United Nations officials said.
Details of the impending operation were unclear, but a Congolese government spokesman told Reuters news agency that the campaign should last 10 to 15 days.
U.N. officials, who in Congo oversee the world's largest peacekeeping force, complained that they received only a vague notice Monday night about the planned operation, even though their mandate is to provide security.
"We don't know what the exact aim is," said Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, a U.N. military spokesman. "Quite surprisingly, we were a little bit sidelined."
He called upon both governments to ensure that any military crackdown complies with international law and provides adequate security for civilians. As a precaution, he said, U.N. troops deployed Tuesday to some displacement camps in the region.
Aid groups and civilians criticized last month's joint operation against the Lord's Resistance Army as ill prepared. After being bombed by Ugandan helicopters, LRA rebels launched dozens of attacks against civilians, killing more than 500 people and displacing thousands in the last month.
