-Caveat Lector-
{{So all of the world is outraged at the death of the Palestinian child yet
no one cares for these people. Is it because these starving children are
Black? Because starvation and death are so common in Africa that we no
longer take notice? Is the problem so great that we feel helpless to deal
with it, especially when there is no real interest? Africa has truly been
'written off' by the rest of the world which is a shame because at one time,
it held such promise and had such an apparently bright future. AKE}}
Angolan Rebels Kill 79 in Attack Near Capital
Monday, May 07, 2001
LUANDA, Angola - In their boldest attack in months UNITA rebels overran a
town near the capital, killing 79 people and interrogating foreign aid
workers, officials said Monday.
About 200 rebels attacked Caxito, a town of 50,000 people about 35 miles
north of Luanda, at dawn on Saturday, the army said in a statement.
The statement did not provide casualty figures but an aid official in Luanda
who was in contact with colleagues in Caxito said 79 people, including
soldiers, police officers and civilians, were killed. The official spoke on
condition his name not be used. The dead were all Angolans.
Rebel officers questioned aid workers from the United States, Canada,
France, the Netherlands, Brazil and Hungary, according to the statement.
The foreign were "very traumatized," the official said. Their identities
were not immediately available. They were working for an Angolan aid group,
known by its Portuguese acronym ADPP.
The rebels ransacked local buildings for food supplies and abducted about 60
people, mostly young men and women from a local school.
In a statement sent by e-mail to The Associated Press bureau in Lisbon,
Portugal, UNITA claimed it killed 37 soldiers and police officers in the
attack.
The fighting reportedly forced thousands to flee toward the crumbling
coastal capital.
The war has driven an estimated 3.8 million people -- about one-third of the
population -- from their homes, causing an acute humanitarian crisis.
The attack cast new doubt on recent indications the foes were ready to
discuss a peaceful end to the civil war which first began after the
country's 1975 independence from Portugal.
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Reports of Mass Starvation Coming Out of Congo
Sunday, May 06, 2001
KABINDA, Congo - Parents reaching a front-line hospital this weekend with
stick-thin children in their arms told of countless civilians succumbing to
disease and hunger in burned, looted villages cut off throughout Congo's
2˝ -year-old war.
The hospital at Kabinda - where 185 emaciated children lay on and under the
60 available beds, with a 2-week-old measles epidemic raging - provided a
first look at a hidden death toll that one international aid group has
estimated in the millions.
"I came because I wanted to save them," said Ntambue Ntambue, who arrived at
Kabinda with two starving, sick children, after seeing two of his others die
untreated during a year of hiding in the bush. "Now I must go back and get
the rest."
"We knew if we didn't come, we would lose everyone," said Ntambue Kilolo,
who walked two days through rebel-controlled territory to reach Kabinda with
his 5-year-old daughter, leaving his five other children behind.
The girl - weighing 17 pounds - slumped Saturday with a feeding tube in her
nose, eyes rolling in her sockets and the frail bones of her skull sharp.
The Associated Press was the first news organization that Congo's government
has permitted to cross to the front line at Kabinda, a southeastern hilltop
city of 140,000. The AP spoke to parents and workers at the hospital
Saturday.
Kabinda was under siege for two years during the war, surrounded by
Rwanda-backed rebel forces who hoped to seize the city and its airstrip and
push on to nearby diamond fields.
Now a cease-fire has started to gell, and rebel fighters have begun
withdrawing from land around the government-controlled town. The 300 adults
and children at the hospital are the first to trickle in from the
surrounding countryside.
Outsiders are finally getting some direct clues to a humanitarian disaster
whose scope has only been guessed at until now.
Congo's war started in 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda, acting with Congolese
rebels, invaded to try to oust Congo's president at the time, Laurent
Kabila. Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia entered the war on the government's
side, stopping the offensive after it had seized 60 percent of the Western
Europe-sized nation.
Peace efforts moved forward after the Jan. 16 assassination of Kabila and
the succession of his son, Joseph. A U.N.-monitored accord obligated all
sides to start pulling back forces from battle zones - like Kabinda - as of
mid-March.
Congo remains divided into government- and rebel-allied sides, and
international organizations have been unable to reach much of the interior
to deliver aid - or even assess the need for it.
The U.S.-based International Rescue Committee has estimated the war's death
toll on the rebel-held side alone at 1.7 million, mostly among civilians
believed to have died of hunger and malnutrition. The organization is
expected soon to formally revise its estimate to 3 million dead.
"This confirms that report," Tshimanga Yatshimba, a government official at
Kabinda, said as he walked through the hospital's courtyard, sweeping a hand
at the children lining the concrete walkway.
Many had the blond hair of longtime malnutrition. Edema, caused by a diet
without protein, puffed the limbs of some children. Most were scabbed with
lesions.
There must be "so many more sick out there who don't have the means to
come," Yatshimba said.
Kabinda remains encircled today, with armored-personnel carriers and
Zimbabwean and Congolese troops lining the one government-held road, west
out of rebel territory. The surrounding area remains under rebel
administration.
Adults among the patients said rebel fighters stole their crops and cattle,
often burning their homes. Many said they hid in the bush, feeding their
families on scavenged cassava leaves.
"The old ones die in the villages. They don't come here," said Sister Maria
Marta Kuhnapfd, a nurse at the hospital.
The hospital has 150 beds, including 60 in the pediatrics ward. It has
enough medicine to treat the patients who have already arrived for another
six to eight weeks - but word is that many more are on their way, said Dr.
Claire Nogier.
Kabinda's airport is closed to day-to-day traffic with the war, and the next
government town is a bumpy 8-hour drive away for even the best
four-wheel-drive vehicle - or a week for most trucks.
One of the hospital's doctors made the trip this week, heading to Kinshasa
to ask urgently for tents, other supplies and more medicine to handle the
influx.
"When we walk through here, they say, 'We are still hungry,"' Nogier said of
the patients. Food shortages mean the starving who reach the hospital get
only two dishes of porridge a day, plus one meal of manioc and corn.
Most of the sick arrive by foot. With the territory opening up again, the
hospital this week saw its first maternity case in two years. It was a
21-year-old woman, who bled all the way on her 12-hour trip on the back of a
bicycle. She was eight months pregnant. By the time she got here, the child
was dead in her womb.
Another heavily pregnant woman, Ngoyi Nalamgu, wept as her emaciated
1-year-old boy turned away again and again from the feeding spoon he was
being offered. After too long without food, young children can forget how to
eat.
"I'm afraid my child will die," Nalamgu said. Doctors inserted a feeding
tube.
With no vaccinations in rebel-held territory around the city since the war
began, measles have broken out - logging at least a 10-percent death rate
among the often badly malnourished children at the hospital, the health
workers said.
Kilolo said the measles outbreak alone has killed hundreds in and around his
town of 2,000. Other parents spoke of entire families of six or more
children dying.
Other diseases are rife, and worse because they were left untreated during
the war. One third of the patients arrive with tuberculosis, and one-third
with treatment-resistant malaria.
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