KIBATI, Congo (AP) — A U.N. aid convoy rumbled past rebel lines Monday for the first time since fighting broke out in August in eastern Congo, carrying medical supplies for clinics looted by retreating government troops.
KIBATI, Congo (AP) — A U.N. aid convoy rumbled past rebel lines Monday for the first time since fighting broke out in August in eastern Congo, carrying medical supplies for clinics looted by retreating government troops. Shadowed by giant volcanoes, U.N. peacekeepers escorted the 12 trucks on a crumbling road north from the provincial capital of Goma, to Rutshuru, a village seized by rebels 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of Goma. Both the Congolese army and the rebel leader it has been battling assured the convoy’s safe passage, said Gloria Fernandez, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in eastern Congo. Medical supplies and tablets to purify water were the priority in this shipment, she said, adding that another convoy on Tuesday would be bringing food for some of the 250,000 refugees displaced by fighting in this central African nation. The U.N. Children’s agency said 100,000 of those were displaced in the last week alone, and 60 percent of them were children. Fernandez said health clinics north of Goma have been "looted and completely destroyed," leaving the Rutshuru hospital as the only operating medical facility in a region of hundreds of thousands of people. Food, however, was the critical issue for most people. "Everybody is hungry, everybody," said Jean Bizy, 25, a teacher, who watched with envy as the U.N. convoy stopped to deliver a sack of potatoes to U.N. troops in Rugari. Bizy said he has been surviving on wild bananas for days. Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda went on the offensive Aug. 28 and brought his fighters to the edge of Goma last week before declaring a unilateral cease-fire. Meanwhile, the United Nations announced that a Senegalese general who commanded Congo’s 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force until October will take charge again following the sudden resignation of his successor. Lt. Gen. Babacar Gaye will serve as commander of the U.N. force for up to six months to give Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon time to find a replacement for Lt. Gen. Vincente Diaz de Villegas of Spain, who resigned last week for personal reasons, U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said. Also Monday, Britain’s Africa minister Mark Malloch-Brown called for reinforcement of the U.N. peacekeeping force. He played down the possibility the European Union would send a separate contingent of troops if Wednesday’s cease-fire fails but said a 1,500-man EU brigade was on standby. The conflict is fueled by festering ethnic hatred left over from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and Congo’s civil wars from 1996-2002. Nkunda claims the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter a half-million Rwandan Tutsis. All sides are believed to fund fighters by illegally mining Congo’s vast mineral riches, giving them no financial interest in stopping the fighting. Tens of thousands of people in Kibati, one of the villages on the road to Rutshuru where tens of thousands have sought safety from the fighting of the past week, have received little food aid since they fled their homes a week ago. Fernandez said families here have been forced to move four or five times in the past 10 days. "They go around in circles…fleeing the movement of troops and the lines of combat," she said. Since Thursday, streams of refugees have thronged the roads around Goma trying to get home, lugging babies and bundles of belongings, guiding children, pigs and goats. To ease food shortages, rebels on Monday allowed farmers to reach Goma in trucks packed with cabbages, onions and spinach. Nkunda began a low-level insurgency in 2004, claiming Congo’s transition to democracy had excluded the Tutsi ethnic group. Despite agreeing in January to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, he resumed fighting in August. Nkunda wants direct talks with the government. He has especially complained about a $9 billion agreement in which China gets access to Congo’s valuable minerals in return for building a highway and railroad. Nkunda’s rebellion has threatened to re-ignite the back-to-back wars that afflicted Congo from 1996 to 2002, drawing in a half dozen African nations. Congo President Joseph Kabila, elected in 2006 in Congo’s first election in 40 years, has struggled to contain the violence in the east. Congo has charged Nkunda with involvement in war crimes, and Human Rights Watch says it has documented summary executions, torture and rape committed by soldiers under Nkunda’s command in 2002 and 2004. Yet rights groups have also accused government forces of atrocities and widespread looting. The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo is its largest in the world, yet only 6,000 peacekeepers of the 17,000-strong U.N. mission in Congo are in the east because of unrest in other provinces. Associated Press Writer David Stringer in London contributed to this report. ______ Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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