Fresh clashes have erupted between a renegade general and government troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Nations said violence in the region was hampering efforts to deliver food to tens of thousands of displaced
civilians.
The latest fighting, pitting former General Laurent Nkunda against army troops, took place Friday in Rumangabo, a village about 60km north of the regional capital, Goma, said Major Gabriel De Brosses, a spokesperson for UN peacekeepers.
The two sides have clashed elsewhere in North Kivu province for a week. On Thursday, commanders agreed to a truce to stop fighting in the town of Sake, west of Goma.
Reached by phone from the area, Nkunda accused the army of breaking the truce. The army ”tried to get back positions we captured in Rumangabo,” Nkunda said. ”We are resisting; that is why there is fighting.”
Army officials could not be reached for comment, but a UN-funded radio station in the DRC cited army and police sources as saying Nkunda’s men attacked the village.
De Brosses said the UN peacekeeping mission brokered Thursday’s truce, but it only applied to Sake.
The fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in the DRC. Up to 35 000 refugees have also crossed the border into Uganda over the past five days, the UN refugee agency said in a statement in Kampala, Uganda. The refugees began crossing on Monday into the small Ugandan
border town of Bunagana.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) issued a statement saying fighting in North Kivu was hampering efforts to send food to those in the DRC who’ve fled recent clashes.
The UN called for $12-million to buy food for the region.
”This is a real and worsening crisis,” said WFP deputy country director Claude Jibidar. ”The fighting is uprooting more people everyday and making it ever harder for WFP to reach them with the assistance they urgently need.”
The clashes are ”restricting humanitarian access and food deliveries to areas beyond Goma. Roads are unsafe,” the WFP statement said.
On Wednesday a UN helicopter airlifting maize flour, peas, cooking oil and sugar to Masisi district ”had to turn back because of the conflict,” WFP said.
Masisi is an area of steep, rolling green hills outside of Goma.
Aid workers said the displaced population at a makeshift camp at Mugunga, had swelled to 27 000 people, most of whom fled Sake and its environs.
”We sleep under the stars without shelter. We have nothing to eat because we brought nothing with us,” one of the displaced, a pastor named Jean Balengele, told the Associated Press by telephone. ”Nobody here is giving us anything.”
In Kinshasa, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, John Holmes, wrapped up a three-day visit, calling on all armed groups in North Kivu not to target civilians sand ”allow humanitarian workers, who are bringing aid to vulnerable populations in need, unconditional and free access”.
In Washington, US deputy State Department spokesperson Tom Casey said on Thursday the US ”calls on all leaders to stop the violence which continues to threaten innocent lives and displace thousands of civilians”.
He welcomed this week’s meeting between Foreign Minister Charles Murigande of Rwanda and his Congolese counterpart, Mbusa Nyamwisi, during which the two issued a statement committing their governments to greater cooperation.
Eastern DRC has long been wracked by fighting between local militias, renegade soldiers and the army. The region was once nominally controlled by rival rebel factions who later signed a peace deal that ended a 1998 to 2002 war.
Nkunda, who is believed to be close to top military officials in Rwanda, quit the army and launched his own rebellion after the DRC’s war ended, claiming the country’s transition to democracy was flawed and excluded the country’s ethnic Tutsi minority.
Nkunda has said he is also fighting against Rwandan Hutu rebels who took refuge in DRC following Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. In 2004, he briefly captured the eastern DRC city of Bukavu. His troops have been accused of torture and rape, and he is named in an international arrest warrant for war crimes. – Sapa-AP