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Congo-Kinshasa: FDLR Attacks Camps Halting Aid Flow
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Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
Kigali
Renewed fighting between DR Congo government army and Rwandan extremist rebels - the FDLR - has forced the UN refugee agency to suspend aid moving into camps in the North Kivu province, it reported Friday.
The UNHCR ended operations after government battles with the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) near the Kinyandoni Anglican IDP site in North Kivu. Clashes on Saturday and Sunday left at least one woman dead.
FDLR fighters attacked a camp where 1,500 people were sheltering on Thursday, forcing them to scatter, the BBC reported Friday. Twenty people have died from the week of voilence shuttering a the recently long lull in fighting.
The UN agency said that "medical assistance is of vital importance," and added that suspected cases of cholera had been reported. The hundreds fleeing in recent days have added to an estimated existing IDP population of 860,000 in North Kivu, which lies next to the border with Rwanda and Uganda.
The displacement in the Rutshuru area, some 70 kilometres north of the provincial capital, Goma, comes three months after the signing of an accord in Goma between the Government and rival armed groups aimed at bringing lasting peace to the DRC's far east after more than a decade of conflict. Despite the accord, tensions have remained high, the UN said.
A peace agreement in 2003 formally brought years of war to a close, but fighting flared again in North Kivu that same year. The UN says an estimated 1.3 million IDPs remain in the DRC, while 350,000 Congolese have fled to other countries.
Last week, reports said villagers in South Kivu had been attacked by the FDLR that also vandalised the little they had and kidnapped about 6 people including a 6-year old girl.
As the rebels continue to cause chaos, President Paul Kagame is in Germen where he has urged its government to act on the FDLR leader Dr. Ignace Murwanashyaka - low living in Bonn.
"The German government needs to address this problem," President Kagame said following a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
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Mrs. Merkel said Germany was looking into the issue closely, adding that some of the people concerned were under UN travel sanction and had had their bank accounts frozen.
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