Agence France-Presse,
KINSHASA: UN peacekeeping forces deployed to protect displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after fighting broke out between the army and insurgents and tens of thousands fled their camps, the United Nations said Tuesday.
More than 28,000 displaced villagers Tuesday fled their desolate camps in the DR Congo's Nord-Kivu province when soldiers loyal to a renegade ex-general attacked army positions nearby, triggering clashes.
“MONUC (the UN mission in DRC) has strengthened its forces in the Mugunga sector,” where three camps housed displaced people in appalling conditions to the west of the provincial capital Goma, MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki said in Kinshasa.
In all, about 60 soldiers with armoured vehicles have been deployed in the battle zone and around the camps “to protect civilians” and their units were on maximum alert, Saiki told AFP.
The fighting forced “an estimated 28,500 people” among 38,000 in the Mugunga I, Mugunga II and Lac Vert camps, to flee on foot and in panic through torrential rain either towards Goma or towards another camp, Jens Hesemann of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said earlier.
DR Congo army Colonel Delphin Kahimbi said “27 insurgents were killed” when the forces loyal to cashiered general, Laurent Nkunda, “had the objective of massacring the displaced in Mugunga.”
He also said a second force of Nkunda's fighters had moved against “Rusayo (further south) with Goma as the goal.”
Nkunda denied being involved in the Mugunga attacks, blaming them on rebel Rwandan Hutus who have long lived on the DR Congo side of the border, the UN's radio Okapi reported.
For the United Nations, “what concerns us above all is the humanitarian situation,” Saiki said. “Once again, civilians have been forced to flee in their thousands in deplorable conditions.”
Nord-Kivu in eastern DR Congo 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, but distressed refugees on Tuesday told AFP that far from protecting them, regular troops had stolen posessions and their weather-proofed sheeting.
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. Stragglers nearby hesitated to leave while others said they had returned but were prevented by the army from entering the camps. Many 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.
Villagers have been displaced 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.
