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Aid workers to relocate Congo frontline refugees

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-14 11:06

GOMA, Congo -- Tens of thousands of refugees at a frontline camp in eastern Congo will be urgently moved to prevent them being caught in crossfire between rebels and the army, aid officials said on Thursday.

A severely malnourished infant hangs limp from her mother's back at a catholic mission feeding center in rebel-held Rutshuru, 70kms (50 miles) north of Goma in eastern Congo, November 13, 2008. [Agencies]

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More than 65,000 civilians who have fled weeks of fighting are camped at Kibati, a few kilometres south of combat lines between Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and government troops.

The refugees, squatting in cramped, dirty conditions within sight of a live volcano, are among 250,000 civilians forced from their homes since a resurgence of fighting in late August in Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province.

Artillery and machinegun battles near Kibati have disrupted aid distribution to the refugees and sent thousands streaming south towards the provincial capital Goma, 10 km (6 miles) away.

"We noticed these people might be in serious danger and the humanitarian community decided we should move them from there ... as soon as possible," Ibrahima Coly, head of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in North Kivu, said.

Relief agencies planned to truck civilians who agreed to go to a camp at Mugunga, 10 km (6 miles) west of Goma, he said, adding he hoped this could start in a week's time.

Refugees at Kibati said they lived in fear of attack.

"We're not safe in the camp ... we don't know who might come, it could be CNDP (Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People rebels), it could be FARDC (Congolese army), but I also worry about thieves," said Norbert Alimasi Mwamba, carrying a sack filled with possessions on his head.

The UN has its largest peacekeeping force in the world, 17,000-strong, in Congo but UN peacekeepers have been unable to protect hundreds of thousands of uprooted civilians in North Kivu from killings, lootings and rape. Human rights groups say both rebels and government troops have committed abuses.

"What I heard from (UN peacekeepers) is that ... they don't have the capacity to protect people (in Kibati)," one aid worker, who asked not to be named, said.

Nkunda, who wants President Joseph Kabila to agree to talks on Congo's future, last month pushed an offensive by his battle-hardened guerrillas to the gates of Goma, attracting a wave of international attention to the North Kivu conflict.

He suspended the offensive by declaring a ceasefire.

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