Humanitarian agencies are still tryingto gather information from parts of northeastern DRC that were recentlyattacked by Ugandan rebels. Attacksby the Lord?s Resistance Army (LRA) killed hundreds of people and causedthousands of others to flee into the bush. UN agencies and others are trying todetermine the exact number of people who need emergency assistance and the bestway of getting it to them.
JimFarrell, spokesman for the World Food Program, spoke from Goma, in the easternDRC, to VOA English to Africa Service reporter Joe De Capua about the status ofrelief operations.
?Thehumanitarian situation is still grave?. However, food is flowing into a goodportion of it (eastern DRC), for example, in the province of South Kivu, theprovince of North Kivu. The reason for the need for the food, of course, is allof the dislocations that occurred during November?s fighting,? he says.
Atthe time, government troops fought CNDP rebel forces led by Laurent Nkunda.
However,up in the northeastern part of the country, up near the point where the bordersof Uganda?Sudan?and the Central African Republic come in, it really got brewedup again around Christmas time by a particularly notorious militia group upthere. And we?ve now got a fresh population of displaced people. How many atthis point we don?t know because there?s still fighting going on up there,? hesays.
Amulti-national military operation is underway in the region to hunt down theLRA.
?Beforeyou can actually start supplying food, you have to do assessments. Before youdo assessments, you have to have security, and that type of security is not inplace yet,? says Farrell.
TheWFP and other UN agencies believe that tens of thousands people have beendisplaced and may be lacking clean water supplies, which raises the risk ofcholera.
?Complicatingthat is the fact that when these people fled, they had to leave their foodstocks and their necessities for living behind. For many of the people whostayed in their towns and villages, the LRA burned much of their food stocks?.And it?s basically turned into a disaster for a great, great many people upthere,? he says.
What?s more, the displacements havedisrupted planting or harvesting. ?So even though you?re here in one of themost lush and fertile areas of Africa, you?ve got this disastrous situationwhere the people have been cut off from their food supplies,? says the WFPspokesman.