Raids by a Rwandan Hutu rebel grouphave made the humanitarian crisis in the eastern DRC even worse. The FDLR haslaunched frequent attacks ever since the Congolese and the Rwandan armies endeda joint offensive against the group in mid-February.
Thelatest towns and villages attacked or threatened include Luofo and Lubero, about170 kilometers from Goma. The UNHCR says the insecurity is preventing emergencysupplies from reach those in need.
UNHCRspokesman David Nthengwe in Goma says rebel raids on April 17 and18th caused a lot of damage. Luofo was hit especially hard, with over 300 homesdestroyed. The FDLR is now threatening to attack again.
"Thisis the tactic they've been using. Before they attacked Luofo village, the localauthorities there told us that the rebel group actually had issued a threat tosay they will be coming to attack. And within two days they did attack andseriously so. And?now they have issued another threat to say they will be attackingLuofo village again. And so this is very worrying because...the people will begoing through what they've already been going through. They're alreadydisplaced. Their homes burned. They cannot access any form of assistance as ofnow. Their children are not in school. Their whole life situation has beendestabilized," he says.
Askedif he knows where the displaced have fled, Nthengwe says, "The kind ofdisplacement that we see now is that a lot of people are being displaced ?probably in excess of 100,000 ? but what is happening is they get attacked,they run away. And then two days later when calm returns they get back theirvillages. But in this situation where their homes are burned, they go back toburned houses or they're going back to destroyed houses. So the movement of thepopulation once they're displaced is back and forth."
Also,rising tensions are reported between the local population and displaced people,who have made a makeshift camp in Kiwanja, near Rutshuru, about 80 kilometersfrom Goma. Nthengwe says, "On Wednesday, apparently, there was a meetingbetween the local civil society in the town and the residents to try andresolve certain disputes and misunderstandings over criminals that arereportedly in the site. After the local authorities had spoken to the group ofresidents, people thought that the matter had been resolved, only to see themmarching towards the site where we have 11,000 displaced people. And theyattacked the site and destroyed several huts."
Localpolice and UN troops intervened to end the violence.
"These are some of the indications ofsome tensions between displaced people coming from various ethnic groups.Because some of the IDPs (internally displaced people) have actually said theyare not wanted in the area by the local residents. And this is worrying toUNHCR because intolerance of this nature has been part of what's been going onin eastern Congo for a long time now," he says.