The Ugandan army exchanged fire with a Congolese boat on oil-rich Lake Albert, and several people were killed and wounded in the clash, AP quoted officials as saying today. Accounts of Monday's incident differed, with the U.N. saying six died and the Ugandan army putting the toll at one dead. The lake has long been a source of tension between Congo and Uganda. Maj. Gabriel De Brosses, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo in Kinshasa, said U.N. teams observed two Congolese soldiers bring six dead ashore in a boat. The dead included three men, two women and a child. De Brosses had no details on what the boat was doing or why Ugandan soldiers fired on it. He said U.N. officials were investigating. The spokesman for the Ugandan army, Maj. Felix Kulaigye, said the incident occurred after U.N. peacekeepers tried to inspect an Ugandan oil exploration boat they believed wanted to cross into the Congolese side of the lake. The crew panicked and tried to flee and the U.N. troops arrested them and took them for questioning on the Congo side, Kulaigye said. A nearby Ugandan military patrol boat witnessed the event, approached, and was confronted by a Congolese patrol, he said. «There was an exchange of gunfire in which one Congolese soldier was killed and three others seriously injured,» Kulaigye said. The border commanders of the Congolese and Ugandan armies after the clash to discuss how to avoid future violence, Kulaigye said. Congolese officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A U.N.-sponsored radio station reported about 10 people were killed and eight wounded in the incident. It said they had been taken to a hospital in Tchomia, about 60 kilometers (about 40 miles) from the regional capital, Bunia.
