Heavy fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has driven at least 1 700 people from a refugee camp, the United Nations said on Tuesday, and an aid group said a team of its medical workers has been trapped in a nearby hospital.
The fighting resumed late on Monday night in the eastern villages of Tongo and Nyanzale, said Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, a spokesperson for the UN mission in the DRC.
The fighting pitted the DRC’s army against the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) a rebel group claiming to be protecting the area’s Tutsi minority.
He said at least 1 700 people were forced to flee from the refugee camp in Tongo, adding to the more than 50 000 that have been displaced in Congo’s Ituri province since September.
In Ituri, villagers have been caught in the crossfire of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group originally from neighbouring Uganda conducting a brutal 21-year insurgency.
Ron Redmond, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency in Geneva, said on Tuesday the bodies of about 100 slain civilians were reportedly dumped in a river and at least 80 children were missing. Redmond says the parents fear they may have been forcibly recruited by the LRA.
Médecins sans Frontières said a team of its workers has been trapped since Monday night in the hospital in the village of Mweso, near Tongo, because of fighting in the surrounding hills.
The fighting there has been going on sporadically for about a week, but intensified on Monday, said Colette Gadenne, a regional head for the aid group. Workers reported hearing heavy arms fire very nearby, she said.
”This morning they could hear the bombings and rocket launchers. And they could hear the gunshots last night,” Gadenne said on Tuesday.
It is too dangerous for the group’s 25 medical workers, five of them foreign staff, to return to their homes in Mweso, she said. About 30 government staff are sequestered in the facility, and 68 patients.
Rebels led by the rebel CNDP’s Laurent Nkunda have fought the army sporadically in the region for years. But clashes have intensified in recent months and the UN says more than 100 000 people have been displaced since August. — Sapa-AP