GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo, October 8, 2007 (ENS) - The fragile month-long truce between rebels and DR Congo government forces has broken down again, leaving some of the world's last mountain gorillas scrambling to get out of the cross-fire.

On Friday and Saturday, rebel forces faithful to General Laurent Nkunda seized an area in Virunga National Park inhabited by the mountain gorillas, forcing wildlife rangers to flee for their lives again as they did in September.

The rangers had been monitoring and tracking the gorillas for their protection. Now the 18 gorillas that were being tracked are once again unprotected and unmonitored.

One of the habituated gorillas in Virunga National Park (Photo courtesy WildlifeDirect)

About 70 of these gorillas in 18 family groups have been habituated to human contact to allow visitors to enjoy a gorilla experience and local communities to benefit from tourism revenue.

"We still have yet to account for 54 of our 72 habituated mountain gorillas," writes the international conservation organization WildlifeDirect after the most recent outbreak of fighting.

The conflict is taking place about 20 of kilometers (12 miles) from Goma, a city of 160,000 people in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the northern shore of Lake Kivu.

According to WildlifeDirect, on Saturday the rangers fled to Rumangabo, the headquarters for the southern sector of Virunga National Park where the organization's director, Norbert Mushenzi, is based.

"At this precise moment they cannot hear shelling or gunfire in the Gorilla Sector," writes WildlifeDirect in a post on their website, "but the army are pushing back the rebels and strengthening their position and fighting is expected to start again shortly. The army has managed to retake the patrol post of Bukima."

"Rangers are worried about potential attacks by rebels on the road north of Rumangabo, as this is what they have heard may happen. There are many military personnel at the army base near Rumangabo and they are getting supplies from Goma," says WildlifeDirect.

On Sunday, Mushenzi and the rangers decided to evacuate all valuable equipment such as binoculars, generator, GPS and satellite dish from Rumangabo to Goma because they could again hear heavy shelling at Bukima.

Some of the rangers who escaped with their lives to Rumangabo. (Photo courtesy WildlifeDirect)

But Nkunda denied this abduction in an interview with Radio France International on the weekend.

On September 3, the same rebels took control of the gorilla sector, invading two ranger patrol posts, looting them of their weapons, mobile phones and rations and forcing the rangers to evacuate the national park.

Following these attacks, rangers at Bukima were also evacuated, but within a few days the rangers returned to the Bukima post and confirmed the safety of all habituated gorilla groups in this area.

Nine mountain gorillas have been killed in the park since the beginning of the year, and it is still unclear who is responsible and why they were killed.

About 720 mountain gorillas survive today, all of them in the wild.

The mountain gorillas live in two distinct populations. One population is found in the Virunga Volcano Region, which lies across the international borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The second population lives in an area of around 330 square kilometers in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

WildlifeDirect is a program of the Africa Conservation Fund, a charitable organization registered in Kenya, in the United States and the UK aimed at helping endangered animals in Eastern Africa.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.