Aid Group: Thousands Have Fled in Congo
By RODRIQUE NGOWI
.c The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Widespread fighting over the past month between rebel
groups ignoring a cease-fire agreement in northeastern Congo has forced more
than 155,000 people to flee their homes, an aid group said Saturday.
In the past four days alone, heavy artillery fire has forced 35,000 from the
town of Makeke toward Beni, headquarters of the Ugandan-backed Congolese
Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement, or RCD-ML, according to the
humanitarian group Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Large parts of the region remain inaccessible to humanitarian aid because of
the violence, said Wyger Wentholt, a spokesman for MSF, known in English as
Doctors Without Borders.
Fighting for control of the resouce-rich provinces of Ituri and North Kivu
continues between RCD-ML forces, the Congolese Liberation Movement and its
allied Congolese Rally for Democracy-National, despite a cease-fire agreement
they all signed on Dec. 30, U.N. officials said.
The two allied groups had agreed to withdraw their troops from the towns of
Mambasa and Komanda to allow the U.N. to deploy military observers and let
RCD-ML resume running the towns, said Manodje Mounoubai, spokesman of the
United Nation mission in Congo.
But attacks have continued and the Congolese Liberation Movement and
Congolese Rally for Democracy-National captured the towns of Teturi and
Bakulu, other U.N. officials said Saturday.
Mounoubai said U.N. military observers were deployed in the towns of Mambasa
and Beni, 800 miles northeast of the Congolese capital, Kinshasa. A team of
military observers also was expected next week in Komanda to monitor
implementation of the cease-fire, Mounoubai said.
In a bid to diffuse tensions, the United Nations also has asked all sides to
meet next week in the eastern city of Kisangani.
``The meeting is primarily aimed at building confidence between soldiers at a
time when serious fighting continues to take place in the east and northeast
of the country,'' Moumoubai said. He did not specify a date for the meeting,
and it was not immediately clear who would attend.
In South Kivu province, 270 miles south of Beni, fighting between a fourth
Congolese rebel group and tribal fighters loyal to the Congolese government
has forced hundreds from the town of Baraka.
Nearly all the foreign troops involved in the war in Congo that broke out in
August 1998 have withdrawn, but fighting has intensified among the main rebel
factions, splinter groups and tribal fighters after the pullout in the east.
01/04/03 13:41 EST
