Thousands flee rebel advance in Congo
Kinshasa, 2008 Oct 29, Press TV
Terrified refugees flee the fighting in Congo.
The rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo are advancing toward other towns as tens of thousands of terrified civilians are fleeing and the UN calls for more troops.
The rebels are not only fighting government forces and United Nations peacekeepers in Goma but are also engaged in clashes around Rugari, a town of 30,000 people between Goma and Rutshuru, as well as northwest of Goma around Sake.
Within a couple of hours, an influx of around 30,000 frightened refugees tripled the size of the camp in Kibati, just outside the regional capital of Goma, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN refugee agency in Geneva, citing UN staff in Congo.
A hundred refugees a day, mostly women and children, also were heading north and east toward the Ugandan border, Congo's Red Cross said.
In Kibati, young men threw rocks at retreating Congolese troops and UN tanks. They said that these peacekeepers are supposed to protect them and they are heading away from the battlefield.
The chaos in eastern Congo has been fueled by festering hatreds left over from the Rwandan genocide and the country's unrelenting civil wars. Renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda has threatened to take Goma despite calls from the UN Security Council for him to respect a cease-fire brokered by the UN in January.
Nkunda scrapped the cease-fire agreement, citing the government's indifference and failure to protect the minority Tutsi population from perpetrators of Rwanda's 1994 genocide hiding in the Congo.
In the "100 days of hell", fanatic Hutu militiamen slaughtered over 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Nkunda has declared that he will liberate all of Congo, a country laden with vast reserves of diamonds, gold, and other resources the size of Western Europe. Congo's vast mineral wealth helped fuel back-to-back wars from 1997 to 2003.
The seemingly endless conflict has been dubbed Africa's World War One.
Meanwhile, the top UN envoy to Congo, Alan Doss, said the UN peacekeeping force in the country is stretched to the limit with an upsurge in fighting in the volatile east and needs more troops quickly.
Speaking in a video press conference from the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Tuesday, he said that if it is not possible for the UN to supply troops immediately it leaves open the possibility of an outside force coming in to help for specific purposes and for a limited period.
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