‘Human catastrophe’ grips Congo
Fierce fighting between government and rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo is causing a humanitarian catastrophe, the Red Cross has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7700111.stm
It said the number of displaced people was growing by the hour and that the precarious security situation was making it difficult to deliver aid.
Intense diplomatic efforts are under way to end the crisis, which has displaced a total of 250,000 people.
A tense ceasefire is holding in and around the eastern city of Goma.
Rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are accused of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The Congolese government has often promised to stop Hutu forces from using its territory, but has not done so.
Gen Nkunda has also objected to government plans for foreign involvement in exploiting the country’s vast mineral wealth.
The Congolese government has refused to negotiate with Gen Nkunda, calling him a terrorist.
‘Extremely unsafe’
With the lull in the fighting and a desperate shortage of food and water in Goma, thousands of people who sought refuge there have been leaving the city, heading to the village of Kibati, about 12km (7.4 miles) to the north.
The BBC’s Peter Greste in Goma says the road from the city is choked with human misery.
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Thousands of people leave Goma
For mile after mile, it is full of families bent forward with their lives on their backs: stoves, food, clothes, bedding and children.
Aid agencies have all but stopped work because of security fears.
“The whole population in Goma, and around Goma are feeling extremely unsafe,” Red Cross spokesman Marcal Izard told the BBC.
“They need food, water, shelter and, most of all, protection, [and] some sense of knowing that they will not be attacked, that they will be spared by this new round of clashes.”
A spokesman for the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, told the BBC that the situation was “extremely critical”.
A Congolese aid-worker based in Goma, Godefroid Marhenge, told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that some displaced people were without water or shelter, and “in desperate need of humanitarian assistance”.
Oxfam and other leading international aid agencies have suspended operations in the city, where a main hospital as well as numerous businesses and homes have been looted.
Gen Nkunda said on Thursday that he was opening a “humanitarian corridor” for people to return to their homes, and so that aid could reach those trapped between his forces and UN soldiers backing up government troops in the city.
Our correspondent said that instead of an open corridor, he found people hurrying back to Goma.
“Someone has been shooting at us,” one breathless woman said. “We can’t go any further.”
But those who did reach Kibati told the BBC that they had more chance of getting food in the forests and bushes around the village than inside Goma.
Aid group Mercy Corps has begun to distribute water to the new arrivals.
Further north, the UNHCR says that it has received reports that several camps for internally displaced people near Rutshuru, about 90km (56 miles) north of Goma, have been forcibly emptied, looted and burned.
About 50,000 people are living in camps in the area, and aid workers are in the process of trying to verify the reports, the UNHRC said.
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