Lionel Healing, AFP | In this file photo taken on February 6, 2009, a pair of Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) stand in dense forest outside Pinga, 150km north-west of Goma, DRC.

A Rwandan Hutu rebel leader wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crime charges has been shot dead by the Congolese army, a DRC military spokesperson said on Wednesday.

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Sylvestre Mudacumura, commander of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), was "definitively neutralised" in DRC's North Kivu province on Tuesday night, General Leon-Richard Kasonga said.

Mudacumura, wanted for charges including rape, torture and pillage, was killed about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the capital of the province Goma.

The FDLR was created by Rwandan Hutu refugees in eastern DRC after the genocide of Tutsis by majority Hutus in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994.

Its fighters are scattered across the eastern Congolese provinces of North and South Kivu as well as in northern Katanga.

The FDLR, opposed to the current Rwandan government, has not launched any large-scale offensive in Rwanda since 2001.

The group is regularly accused of committing atrocities against civilians in the zones it controls.

Eastern DR Congo has been torn for more than two decades by armed conflicts fed by ethnic and land disputes, competition for control of a wealth of mineral resources and regional rivalries.

Rwandan genocide: 25 years on, mass graves still being discovered

(AFP)

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