- Title: VARIOUS: Thousands of Goma residents flee as fighting continues in Eastern Congo
- Date: 29th October 2008
- Summary: (BN12) NAIROBI, KENYA (OCTOBER 28, 2008) (REUTERS) JULIETTE PRODHAN, OXFAM GB, DR CONGO PROGRAMME MANAGER, TALKING TO JOURNALIST JOURNALIST TAKING PICTURE (SOUNDBITE) (English) JULIETTE PRODHAN, OXFAM GB, DR CONGO PROGRAMME MANAGER, SAYING "As the staff told me, there is a stream of IDP's coming down towards the city, some of them are coming as far as the city. We have s
- Embargoed: 13th November 2008 12:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: International Relations
- Reuters ID: LVA85RSJPO7QGL70RCYQ22SXS9F0
- Story Text: Tens of thousands of Congolese residents were on the move on Tuesday (October 28), fleeing from their towns and villages as the national army prepared to abandon a town in the blood-stained easterly province of North Kivu.
Heavily armed Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda were battling their way along a road towards Rutshuru, about 100 km (60 miles) north of North Kivu's provincial capital Goma on the third day of their offensive.
Government troops had already fled in the face of a rebel advance that has sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing for their lives.
Residents said they were fleeing after the fighting erupted near their village.
"We have seen the Military attacking from the forest there, and then everyone has packed their belongings, and we fled this is how we are here," said Kambala, a resident of the village of Kanyarucinya.
The area north of Kivu province normally shelters tens of thousands of internal refugees displaced by nearly two years of on-off fighting in the tin-mining region.
"Really we are lacking even water, when you move around here, you find unaccompanied children, women who have lost their husbands, everybody sleeps all over the place, anywhere and when it rains it is serious for us," added Alex Semagoza a fellow villager.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it was preparing for the arrival of about 30,000 displaced people at its Kibati camp 10 km (6 miles) north of Goma, including 20,000 from the village of Kibumba, 20 km from Goma, which insurgents attacked on Monday (October 27).
The U.N.'s peacekeeping mission, MONUC, whose 17,000 personnel are mostly deployed in Congo's east, sent attack helicopters against rebel positions north of Goma on Monday, drawing anti-aircraft fire from Nkunda loyalists.
This however did not seem to reassure the civilians who continued fleeing.
"People are fleeing the war and leaving the villages to come here into town, because here there remains the safety and around Goma, there is more security," said another civilian who declined to be named.
British charity Oxfam said on Tuesday the situation is dire and the worst seen since recent fighting begun.
Oxfam's country manager in DRC, Juliette Prodhan told journalists in Nairobi, Kenya, the numbers of people fleeing could be much higher than reports suggest.
"As the staff told me, there is a stream of IDP's coming down towards the city, some of them are coming as far as the city. We have seen over the past months, we have seen trickles, we have seen surges but we have never seen such a stream of IDPs, excuse me, of displaced people all at once and this is partly because of the wide spread fear and panic and lack of information that people have as well, but also because the security situation is getting very very unsure to levels that we have never seen before,"
said Prodhan.
U.N. peacekeepers had planned to evacuate around 50 foreign aid workers from Rutshuru but their attempt had been thwarted, U.N. humanitarian office OCHA, said.
An OCHA spokesman said the aid workers were blocked by both the population and soldiers and that there are also attacks on humanitarian installations and looting.
"There are real threats of civil disturbances so protests in the town can escalate into violence and that is something we need to keep a very close eye on and that kind of violence can escalate within 10 minutes so that is why we have to be very cautious at the moment about our movements and hope that things will calm down," said Oxfam's Prodhan.
Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) accuses Congo's army of collaborating with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which includes Hutu militias and ex-Rwandan soldiers responsible for orchestrating Rwanda's 1994 genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Around 250,000 civilians have fled their homes in North Kivu since a January peace deal collapsed in August.
Nearly two years of sporadic fighting had already displaced around 850,000 people before the latest fighting began, according to U.N. figures.
Congo's 1998-2003 war and the resulting humanitarian crisis have killed an estimated 5.4 million people. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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