Laurent Nkunda, Tutsi rebel leader of the National Council for the Defense of the People (CNDP) of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), has been arrested, a statement from a joint Rwandan-DR Congo military operation said on Friday.

The statement said Nkunda was captured on Thursday evening when he was fleeing on neighboring Rwandan territory.

The ex-general was nabbed at 10: 30 p.m. local time Thursday on his way to flee to Rwanda after resistance against "our troops at Bunagana" in North Kivu province, the statement said.

Three battalions of Rwandan troops were involved in Thursday's operation to zero in on Nkunda's headquarters at Bunagana, according to the statement.

About 1,500 Rwandan troops were first reported in DR Congo on Tuesday, joining in a long-planned military operation to knock out the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is held responsible for the massive massacre in Rwanda in 1994.

The arrest of the renegade Tutis general, who quit the army in 2004 in a revolt against Kinshasa, revealed the determination of both countries to terminate both Hutu and Tutsi rebels in the eastern part of DR Congo in search for good neighborhood and stability in the Great Lake region.

Both rebel groups have caused tensions between Kinshasa and Kigali. Rwanda, which sent troops across the border into DR Congo in the 1990s to attack the FDLR, accused DR Congo of collaborating with the Hutu rebels. DR Congo blasted Rwanda for supporting the CNDP which resumed fighting in August.

Under a peace plan advanced last year by African countries, the two neighbors join hands in uprooting the FDLR and appeasing the situation in the east of DR Congo.

DR Congo spokesman Lambert Mende Omalanga said on Wednesday that Kinshasa invited Rwandan troops under article 91 of the Constitution and that "today the two countries evolve in a perfect synergy in this operation," although Rwanda sought a unilateral solution in the 1990s.

The crackdown came after CNDP chief of staff Bosco Ntaganda declared a breakaway from Nkunda and signed a peace deal with Kinshasa in the presence of Congolese and Rwandan officials.

(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2009)