300 000 flee eastern DRC
2007-09-25 08:18
Kinshasa - Thousands of villagers are fleeing their homes in violence-wracked eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, pushing the number of villagers displaced since hostilities flared up nearly one year ago to 300 000.
Skirmishes between army troops and fighters loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda had eased in recent weeks, but the region remained tense and many fear clashes would start anew.
Masako Yanekawa, who heads the office for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Goma, said people were now fleeing Nkunda's fighters, accusing them of forcibly recruiting children and adults.
"The number of people forced to flee violence this year in the DRC's North Kivu province has passed the 300 000 mark, the highest level in more than three years," said Jens Hesemann, the UNHCR spokesperson in the DRC.
Massive disruption in North Kivu
Eastern DRC's North Kivu province had been lawless and volatile for more than a decade, wracked by violence involving local militias, renegade soldiers, the military, and armies and rebels from neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda. Since the end of a four-year war in 2002, the government had struggled to bring it under control.
UNHCR said about 500 000 refugees in North Kivu had been displaced long before fighting began last year, bringing the total number of displaced in the province to at least three quarters of a million people.
In the last three days, an estimated 4 000 people arrived at the Bulengo camp, the newest United Nations camp in North Kivu, said Yanekawa.
Forced recruitment in villages
According to Yanekawa: "Some of these refugees come directly from the villages, the bush and the forest where they fled to avoid the recruitment of their children and their adults by the men of Nkunda."
Joseph Kabila, who was elected president of DRC in last year's election, visited the eastern province last week and met with humanitarian agencies to discuss ways to protect civilians and the need to improve access to tense areas.
In a statement last week, UN officials said they had credible evidence indicating Nkunda was continuing to recruit child soldiers in violation of international law.
Nkunda, whose Tutsi ethnic group was a minority in DRC, left the army and formed his own militia soon after the country's war ended in 2002, claiming he needed to fight to protect Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who took refuge in east DRC after Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
In 2004, Nkunda briefly captured the city of Bukavu. His troops had been accused of torture and rape, and he was named in an international arrest warrant for war crimes.
Kabila's government had struggled, with little success, to establish authority over eastern regions thousands of kilometres from Kinshasa.
- AP