An estimated 40 000 residents have fled a town in the troubled South Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after it was occupied last week by a local tribal militia, a relief agency said on Monday.
It said people fleeing east had reported by radio that 20 of their number had died of illness.
Three women had given birth on the road in an area notorious for the presence of exiled extremist ethnic Hutu rebels held responsible for the 1994 genocide of neighbouring Rwanda’s Tutsi community.
The agency said the exodus from the town of Shibanda started September 25 when the armed militia occupied the town without bloodshed following the withdrawal of forces of the Rwandan-backed rebel movement, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).
Shibanda lies 350 kilometres west of Bukavu, a DRC town on the Rwandan border at the southern edge of Lake Kivu. The refugees said they were still 200 kilometres away from Bukavu.
A local community organisation said about 10 000 had fled west towards Kindu and Pangi in Maniema Province, another 10 000 towards Bukavu, and the remainder had sought shelter in the tropical forests outside the town.
Shibanda is now under the control of a local Mai-Mai tribal militia under the command of a man called General Padiri who belongs to the local Batemba tribe, reportedly allied to Hutu extremists.
Padiri was reported to have held a meeting in Shibanda for residents on Sunday, but no details were given.
Meanwhile, RCD sources said they were ready to negotiate with the militia group. The RCD started leaving Shibanda on Tuesday last week to reinforce other areas where Rwandan army units had pulled out under a troop withdrawal agreement signed with DRC President Joseph Kabila.
Shibanda had been occupied until some months ago by the Rwandan army which intervened in DRC in the late 1990s to back movements like the RCD in a crackdown on the Hutu extremists.
The only two humanitarian organisations working in the town, normally accessible by light aircraft only, left Shibanda last week, and the UN observer mission in DRC (Monuc) is not represented in the town. – Sapa-AFP