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Zimbabwe: 28 000 Flee Camps After Fresh Fighting in DRC
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 Published by the government of Zimbabwe |
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The Herald (Harare)
14 November 2007
Posted to the web 14 November 2007
Harare
Kinshasa - More than 28,000 displaced villagers Tuesday fled their desolate camps in the DR Congo's Nord-Kivu province after insurgent troops attacked army positions nearby, a UN official said.
"Our assessment is that three-fourths of the population of the camps at Mugunga I, Mugunga II and Lac Vert which house around 38,000 people, have fled," Jens Hesemann, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told AFP.
"Of these estimated 28,500 people, some have fled towards Goma," the chief town of Nord-Kivu about 15 kilometres (nines miles) to the east, and towards another camp, he said, while witnesses told of panic and desperation among the refugees in torrential rain.
The Congolese army said its soldiers were attacked Tuesday by forces loyal to a cashiered general, Laurent Nkunda, in the restive province, and that 27 of the insurgents were killed when the army fought off a raid on a refugee camp. "We were attacked early today at Njulo by insurgent soldiers," said Major Joseph Omari, who heads a battalion charged with ensuring the security of the towns of Sake and Mugunga, referring to a hill overlooking the Mugunga camps.
Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, deputy army commander in the eastern province, said "we had no losses on our side ... (and) 27 insurgents were killed," when there were two attacks. Kahimbi charged that Nkunda's forces "had the objective of massacring the displaced in Mugunga, and a second targetting Rusayo (further south) with Goma as the goal."
But Nkunda denied being involved in the Mugunga attacks, blaming them on rebel Rwandan Hutus who have long lived on the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the border, the UN's radio Okapi reported.
Nord-Kivu in eastern DRC has been the site of confrontations between the Congolese army and insurgents backing Nkunda in recent months. In October, President Laurent Kabila gave the go-ahead for the army to disarm by force, if necessary, resistant rebel fighters by year's end. In turn, Nkunda's troops also appear to have hardened their stance, a UN official said. "There is now with Nkunda -- who is more and more isolated -- a will to sow terror, to destabilise, to attack civilians more openly," the official said.
Meanwhile, thousands of people hauling tarpaulins, blankets and food silently trudged down the main road to Goma in the downpour.
"There was loud gunfire. I fled with my four children but I don't know where to go," said Marie Katungu, a woman in her thirties surrounded by three of her children. At Mungungu, the camps were almost deserted. A few stragglers nearby hesitated to leave while others said they had returned but were prevented by the army from entering the camps. Many of the displaced appeared terrified. "The sites must be made secure, the peacekeepers must be mobilised for this. There's a great security risk for the displaced civilians who are already in an awful situation," UN spokesman Hesemann said. According to the United Nations, some 375,000 Congolese have been forced to leave their homes in Nord-Kivu since December due to continued fighting between government forces, renegade troops and rebels.
Since the end of August, the regular army has deployed about 20,000 troops there to fight Nkunda's men or persuade them to surrender and demobilise with a chance to join a national military undergoing reforms after successive civil and rebel wars ended in 2003.
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Hundreds of thousands of villagers have been displaced in Nord-Kivu by fighting not only between the army and Nkunda, who claims to be protecting the minority Congolese Tutsi population, but also involving the Mai-Mai militia and Rwandan Hutu rebels from the neighbouring country who are hostile to Nkunda.
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