The raids targeted one of the positions of the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, said Oliver Hamuli, the spokesman for the military operation.

The group is made up primarily of ethnic Hutus from Rwanda who fled across the border into Congo following the 1994 slaughter of more than 500,000 mostly ethnic Tutsi civilians.

“The death toll from this attack is more than 40 dead and several hurt — all on the FDLR side,” said Hamuli, the spokesman for a joint Rwanda-Congo military operation aimed at stamping out the remnants of the Hutu militia.

He said the attack took place late Thursday in Kashebere, in the eastern Congo region of Masisi. The FDLR commanders were in the midst of a meeting when the air raids began. A few miles (kilometers) away, a second attack took place.

“The death toll there was high as well. The survivors threw the bodies in the river,” Hamuli said.

The echoes of Rwanda’s genocide are still being felt in Congo nearly 15 years later. The presence of the FDLR in Congo’s terraced hills has destabilized the region, giving rise to a counter rebel group, made up of Congolese Tutsis. While that group claimed to be protecting Congo’s Tutsi minority from the Hutu militia, it too is now accused of grave abuses.

Congo has long accused Rwanda of backing the Tutsi militia — known as the CNDP. Rwanda, on the other hand, has accused Congo of aiding the FDLR and the two countries twice went to war over the issue.

But in a recent turn, Congo agreed to join forces with Rwanda in order to finally root out the last of the FDLR. The joint operation began last month. Congo’s President Joseph Kabila, however, gave a news conference to make it known that he expects troops from his former enemy to leave Congolese territory by the end of February.

More than 40 rebels killed in Congo air raid – Los Angeles Times

The Uganda-led operation targeted the brutal rebel group called Lord’s Resistance Army, which had been hiding in a Congolese national park. The rebel leaders escaped and small group of fighters rampaged through towns in northeastern Congo, hacking, burning, shooting and clubbing civilians to death, the newspaper said.

The U.S. involvement was its first helping plan such a specific military offensive with Uganda, the Times said, citing senior U.S. military officials. The officials said a team of 17 advisers and analysts from the Pentagon’s new Africa Command worked with Ugandan officers, providing satellite phones, intelligence and $1 million in fuel.

No U.S. forces were involved in ground fighting, the Times said, adding that human rights advocates and villagers said the Ugandan and Congolese troops did little to protect villagers from the attackers.

U.S. officials admitted that villagers were left unprotected.

“We provided insights and alternatives for them to consider, but their choices were their choices,” the newspaper quoted a U.S. military official who was briefed on the operation as saying, in reference to the African ground forces. “In the end, it was not our operation,” the U.S. official said.

A Ugandan military spokesman declined to discuss the U.S. involvement, saying only “There was no way to prevent these massacres.”

The rebel group remains at large, moving through villages, torch them and killing civilians, the Times said. Witnesses said they have also kidnapped hundreds of children to enslave them into their forces, it said.

Massacres follow failed U.S.-aided Uganda mission: report | International | Reuters

The decision was bitterly criticised by a powerful coalition of politicians, charities and religious leaders.

More than 11,000 complaints from the public had been received by Sunday night, against only 68 messages of support.

Thousands of protesters massed outside BBC headquarters in London and demonstrators invaded the Glasgow office of BBC Scotland.

More than 50 MPs from across the political spectrum have backed an emergency Commons motion calling on the BBC to screen the two-minute appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee, which represents 13 leading British charities.

ITV, Channel 4 and Five have all agreed to show it after their main news bulletins
tonight. Sky News has yet to decide.

BBC bosses insist the corporation’s reputation for impartiality would be dented if they did. But critics branded the decision ‘inconsistent and incoherent’ as the BBC has previously screened appeals for victims of conflicts.

Last year, it broadcast an appeal for the victims of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The DEC hopes to raise millions to bring emergency aid to 500,000 Palestinians left without access to running water following Israel’s three-week assault on the territory.

The charities say families are in desperate need of food, medicines and shelter as a result of the conflict between Israel and Hamas-led militants.

BBC director general Mark Thompson rejected a direct plea from International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander to show the appeal.

He said: ‘The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story. When we have turned down DEC appeals in the past it has been because of this risk of giving the public the impression that the BBC was taking sides in an ongoing conflict.’

But Mr Alexander said the public would be ‘shocked, surprised and saddened’.

He said: ‘I think the British public can distinguish between support for humanitarian aid and perceived partiality in a conflict.

‘I really struggle to see, in the face of the immense human suffering in Gaza at the moment, that this is in any way a credible argument.’

Mr Thompson’s explanations were dismissed as ‘completely feeble’ by health minister Ben Bradshaw.

The criticism was echoed by religious leaders including Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and some Jewish groups.

Urging the BBC to ‘wake up and get on with it’, Dr Sentamu said: ‘In the end, it’s not a question of impartiality, it’s a question of those who have been made destitute, those who need food, those who need medicine, those who need help.

‘This is not an appeal for Hamas – that would be horrendous and horrific. This is to help actual people who are wounded, who need medicines, who need shelter, who need food.’

Labour MP Richard Burden will table an early-day motion today criticising the BBC’s ‘unconvincing and incoherent’ decision.

He said: ‘This is not about taking sides in the conflict. It is about providing urgent help to people in desperate need. More than 400 children have died, thousands are homeless and nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Gaza.

‘The important thing is to get aid into Gaza. This is recognised by almost everyone – including the Government. The BBC appears to be the only one who has a problem seeing this.’

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said it was an ‘insult’ to suggest viewers could not distinguish between the humanitarian needs of children and families in Gaza and the ‘political sensitivities of the Middle East’.

He said: ‘To suggest that the BBC should somehow not allow people to show their compassion for that human suffering because of the wider controversy in the Middle East is a case of the BBC totally getting its priorities upside-down.’

Justice Minister Shahid Malik said he had not met anyone who supported the BBC’s position.

He said: ‘Lots of Jewish friends I have spoken to are horrified by what the BBC are doing. I haven’t come across anyone, frankly, that supports the BBC’s position.’

Some of the comments drew criticism, however, from BBC Trust chairman Michael Lyons, who said they were ‘coming close to constituting undue interference in the editorial independence of the BBC’.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said it was right for the BBC to make its own decision.

He said: ‘These are difficult judgments for all broadcasters, but particularly for the BBC
because of the way it is funded.

‘Everybody likes to accuse the BBC of bias one way or another and it always finds itself in the centre of very difficult judgment calls about these kind of things.’

He added: ‘I am pleased that other broadcasters have decided to show this appeal.’

Crisis at BBC escalates as 11,000 complain over refusal to broadcast Gaza appeal | Mail Online

“We would … prefer a voluntary disarmament,” Mende Omalanga said. “We are campaigning for them to put [down] their guns.”

So far, about 160 of the estimated 6,500 Rwandan rebels in Congo’s eastern regions have heeded the call and laid down their arms, he said.

Omalanga said the messages in the Rwandan language of Kinawanda are being broadcast in North Kivu region during the day and night. Rebels who surrender will have the choice of returning to Rwanda or staying in Congo as refugees, Omalanga said.

He stressed that no one will be forced to return to Rwanda, where the government is working with Congo in an unprecedented partnership to combat ethnic violence.

“It is part of our deal with Rwanda,” Omalanga said. “They are happy with this program.”

He said the rebels who have surrendered so far are “on their way to Goma,” a regional capital in eastern Congo.

As part of the partnership, Rwandan authorities on Friday arrested Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, a member of the Tutsi ethnic group, raising hopes for peace in the war-ravaged region. International observers hope that Nkunda’s arrest will lead the roughly 1,500 Tutsi fighters that follow him to join with government forces.

Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have traditionally been on opposite sides of the conflict in eastern Congo — which has pitted ethnic Tutsis, supported by Rwanda, against Congo-backed Hutus.

The fighting is a carry-over from the ethnic slaughter of the 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were killed.

A harshly worded report from the U.N. last month accused Rwanda and Congo of fighting a proxy war in the region, using the ethnic groups. It said both sides had used execution, rape and child soldiers in the fighting.

On Saturday, fighting broke out between Hutu rebels and Rwandan and Congolese troops in Congo’s Lubero region. Omalanga said nine Hutu rebels were killed and one Congolese soldier was wounded.

United Nations spokesman Jean Paul Deitrich also confirmed nine Hutu tribal fighters were killed in the Saturday clashes in Lubero, about 124 miles (200 kilometers) northeast of Goma.

Omalanga said the coalition — the Rwandan and Congolese forces — were reacting to the rebels who “shot first.”

Congo to rebels: Surrender now – CNN.com

The council unanimously approved the secretary-general’s request for a temporary surge in peacekeepers. But the question now is who will contribute the troops and how soon will they arrive in the conflict zone.

French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said some countries have offered troops, but the department of peacekeeping is still looking for the full number needed and it would take some weeks.

“Today, we authorized the DPKO [Department of Peacekeeping Operations] to recruit and increase the number of troops on the ground, but they have to do the work,” Ripert said. “But they have started planning for that, I think.”

Countries considering contributing troops are meeting at U.N. headquarters.

Diplomats say the reinforcement of the mission, known as MONUC, is necessary to help the fragile peace process and ease the growing humanitarian crisis.

The U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo is already the organization’s largest, with about 17,000 peacekeepers. But they keep watch over a territory the size of Western Europe, and a spike in violence since August has, according to U.N. officials, “overstretched” the mission.

Peacekeepers have been redeployed in recent weeks from other parts of Congo to North Kivu – the epicenter of the violence. About 6,000 peacekeepers are in that area now, particularly in and around the city of Goma.

Congolese government forces and rebel fighters led by renegade General Laurent Nkunda have clashed repeatedly in the eastern Congo since August, following the collapse of a January peace deal.

VOA News

The decision marks the second time Serbia will face the allegation of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Bosnia also accused Serb forces of being responsible for genocide during the brutal conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Croatia alleged that Serb attacks that killed and displaced thousands of Croats during the 1991-95 war of Croatian independence was a form of genocide.

Zagreb demanded that the court order Belgrade to pay compensation. Croatia also asked the court to order Serbia to help trace people missing from the war and return cultural items plundered during the fighting.

Serbia countered that the court had no jurisdiction in the case, saying that it was not a United Nations member state when Croatia filed the case in 1999.

But the 17-judge tribunal rejected the arguments by Serbia, ruling that the country had assumed the responsibilities of the former Yugoslavia after that state crumbled in the early 1990s – including its responsibility to adhere to the convention outlawing genocide.

In a 12-5 decision, the court ruled that it had “jurisdiction to entertain the case,” said the court president, Rosalyn Higgins.

The court will likely take years to hear the case and issue a ruling.

A representative of Serbia, Tibor Varady, criticized the ruling, saying that it would only serve to prolong tensions between the Balkan neighbors.

“I think it would be much better to insist consistently on individual criminal responsibility,” he said.

But the leader of the Croatian delegation, Ivan Simonovic, said the case should help both countries move forward by bringing legal closure for wartime atrocities.

President Stipe Mesic of Croatia described the ruling as “just.”

In a similar case brought by Bosnia, the court exonerated Serbia in February 2007 of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but ruled that the authorities had failed to prevent the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.
Congo rebel to go on trial

The International Criminal Court cleared the way Tuesday to begin its first trial in January, in the case of a Congolese rebel charged with recruiting child soldiers and sending them into battle, The Associated Press reported.

The court in The Hague lifted its suspension of the case against Thomas Lubanga after the prosecution accepted a request that it hand over to the judges confidential evidence received from the United Nations.

The case is a landmark on several scores: Lubanga is the first defendant brought before the court since it was created in 2002 as the first permanent war crimes tribunal, and it is the first trial to deal exclusively with the use of child soldiers.

The judges were on the verge of throwing out the case in July and had ordered Lubanga’s release, saying that he could not get a fair trial because some of the material being withheld by the prosecution could help Lubanga’s defense.

The United Nations and other agencies in Congo had sought to keep the information private to shield field workers from the possibility of retribution.

Appeals judges agreed last month that Lubanga’s trial would be unfair unless all the evidence was disclosed, at least to the judges if not to the defense.

After reading the material, the three-judge tribunal ruled Tuesday the trial could go ahead and set a provisional starting date of Jan. 26.

Lubanga denies recruiting and conscripting children to fight in eastern Congo during 2002-03.

International Herald Tribune

On the other side, government soldiers in flip-flops balancing portable generators and luggage on their heads have begun to flee.

In between, the vast Central African nation’s deepening humanitarian crisis is laid bare: Thousands of desperate civilians who used to live in this eastern Congo town huddle against coils of concertina wire surrounding a base for U.N. peacekeepers, waiting nervously for the rebels.

“We are hungry and thirsty, but we don’t want any aid. We want security,” said 30-year-old Jeff Machozi, who built a makeshift tent three days ago with tree branches and bamboo he ripped out of the earth. “We want this war to stop.”

Clashes between fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the army and its allied spear-wielding militias exploded in August and has displaced at least 250,000 people.

But those refugee figures do not include remote towns like Kanyabayonga, whose entire population has fled, or Kayna, another town just to the north, which was also virtually deserted Monday.

Kanyabayonga is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of the regional capital, Goma.

Though Nkunda told U.N. envoy Olusegun Obasanjo on Sunday that he was committed to a cease-fire, his troops have been carving out an even greater territory in the remote hills north of Goma.

Early Monday, the rebels took control of Rwindi, the headquarters of Virunga National Park, after a night spent trading artillery and mortar fire with army forces. Rwindi is 10 miles (17 kilometers) south of Kanyabayonga.

U.N. peacekeepers at a base in Rwindi that was between the two sides said rounds flew overhead for more than an hour. Some exploded nearby, and one Indian soldier in a trench was wounded in the head by shrapnel, U.N. commanders at the base said.

Two government vehicles full of ammunition burned in the night, though peacekeepers said it wasn’t clear if soldiers destroyed them by accident or to keep rebels from taking them.

By Monday morning, peacekeepers said they woke to find rebels in the town.

Monday afternoon, rebel fighters were already marching single-file by the side of the road north toward Kanyabayonga, which sits on a hilltop. Wearing crisp military uniforms and black Wellington boots, they carried rockets, generators and Kalashnikov rifles.

Halfway up the road that zigzags to the top of the densely forested mountain, an army soldier waved a car of approaching journalists to stop — his presence marking the front line.

Kanyabayonga itself was virtually deserted, except for handfuls of people still fleeing with everything they owned. Women carried babies and plastic yellow Jerry cans and rolled mattresses on their backs. Children, doubled over under heavy loads, trekked behind.

Hundreds of soldiers could be seen in apparent retreat, walking down the same roads pushing wooden bikes laden with sacks, and carrying ammunition and bundles of belongings on their heads.

Hundreds of other troops stayed behind, though, scattered across the town of empty straw huts, their dry-mud walls held together with sticks.

One soldier in flip-flops, Jerome Roger, said government troops had fled Rwindi on the orders of their unit commander. He said he did not know his army’s plans or strategy — he and his colleagues had no radios to communicate with other units.

“We retreated from Rwindi; maybe we’ll retreat from here,” Roger said, shrugging his shoulders and smiling wildly as marijuana smoke wafted through the air.

On a hill near the U.N. base in Kanyabayonga, fearful residents tethered plastic tents to the jagged coils of concertina wire surrounding it. Others jammed tree branches into the ground, trying to build shelters.

John Mbusa, 60, said he fled Kanyabayonga last week after an earlier round of fighting drew near. He moved north with his wife and eight children, sleeping outside. Returning four days later, he found soldiers pillaging the town.

“We didn’t even stay home one night,” Mbusa said. “They took everything we had, mattresses, money. They were drunk. We left immediately.”

His next stop: the U.N. base.

Many residents had mixed feelings about the U.N. mission in Kanyabayonga. Its mere presence offers a modicum of security in a lawless part of the world, but refugees are skeptical about what protection the peacekeepers offer.

“The U.N. does nothing,” Mbusa said. “When there is fighting, they don’t even come out. They stare at us.”

Civilians crowded around the U.N. base farther south in Rwindi made similar complaints, but said peacekeepers had brought them rice and curry and had allowed them to sleep — outside — beside a U.N. shipping container during Sunday night’s exchange of artillery.

Congo has the world’s largest U.N. peacekeeping mission, with 17,000 troops, but the peacekeepers have been unable to either stop the fighting or protect civilians.

Nkunda declared a unilateral cease-fire in late October as his fighters swarmed toward Goma, which serves as regional headquarters for the provincial government, the U.N. and aid groups.

Since then, rebels have consolidated their positions, appointing their own local administrators and forcibly recruited young men and boys to join their ranks, aid workers say.

Though the rebels halted outside Goma, they have advanced farther north. Today they control the entire road from the outskirts of Goma to the doorstep of Kanyabayonga.

The dilapidated route winds through Virunga National Park, where elephants roam and troops of baboons can be seen scurrying through the road. Several park ranger stations and gates are abandoned, littered with boots and discarded uniforms.

“They are continuing their offensive farther north,” U.N. peacekeeping spokesman Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich said. “This shows they’re not respecting their own cease-fire they’ve declared.”

The Associated Press:

Having met President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, Mr Obasanjo is heading east to see rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. He has already spoken to him by phone.

Meanwhile the first UN aid delivery has reached areas hit by fighting between rebels and Congolese government troops.

An estimated 250,000 people have been made homeless by the violence.

Mr Obasanjo’s visit follows Friday’s announcement that Rwanda and DR Congo have agreed to work together to deal with forces along their common border blamed for the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Mr Obasanjo confirmed that he would meet Mr Nkunda during a visit to the eastern North-Kivu region.

“I go to Goma [North Kivu's provincial capital], and from Goma, we will be seeing Nkunda. He was kind enough to ring me three days ago and speak to me while I was in Nigeria,” the envoy said.

“He explained that he is full of expectations for us to meet and talk face-to-face.”

The Associated Press quoted Gen Nkunda’s spokesman as saying the meeting was likely to take place on Sunday in the rebel-held town of Rutshuru, north of Goma, or Bunagana, on the Uganda border.

No details of Mr Obasanjo’s discussions with Mr Kabila have yet been given.

Earlier, Mr Obasanjo said he was hopeful his mission could achieve peace, but that it would not be easy.

Gen Nkunda says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attacks by Rwandan FDLR Hutu rebels who fled to DR Congo after the genocide.

Some 250,000 people have fled violence that began in August between Gen Nkunda’s fighters and government forces.

The United Nations says it has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

On Friday, for the first time after weeks of fighting, UN aid workers delivered maize and lentils to the first of at least 50,000 hungry civilians in Rutshuru territory, about 40 miles (70km) north of Goma.

“I can’t remember how many days my family hasn’t eaten – I think about four or five days,” said teacher Djuma Kabere.

“These are very small quantities. How can families survive? It’s more important to bring peace instead of food.”

Destabilising factor

Also on Friday, Rwanda and DR Congo agreed to co-operate in dealing with forces along their common border.

Foreign ministers from both countries said Rwandan intelligence teams would go into DR Congo to work with the Congolese army and the international community to help end the presence there of Hutu fighters, cited by Gen Nkunda as the justification for his rebellion.

The Hutu fighters – known as the Interahamwe – have lived in eastern DR Congo since 1994 and have been a key factor in destabilising the region.

The Congolese government has often promised to stop Hutu forces using its territory, but has not done so.

Its forces have been accused of instead working with the FDLR to exploit the region’s rich mines.

BBC NEWS

Regional leaders and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon are were meeting with seven African leaders in Nairobi, Kenya, in the latest diplomatic effort to tackle what aid agencies say is developing into a major humanitarian crisis.

The talks involving Congo President Joseph Kabila, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Tanzania’s Jakaya Kikwete came as renewed fighting threatened to unravel a cease-fire struck between the Congolese government and rebels forces.

The conflict in country’s east is driven by unresolved ethnic hatred stemming from the killings of a half-million Tsutis by Hutu militia in Rwanda and Congo’s civil wars in 1994.

The United Nations released a statement Thursday saying the secretary-general “is deeply concerned about the ongoing violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

The secretary-general “calls for an immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of forces to positions held prior to the resumption of fighting on 28 August,” the statement said, referring to when the latest wave of fighting broke out.

Ban “urges the armed groups involved in the ongoing fighting to support the current efforts to find a political solution to the crisis in the eastern DRC and to avoid activities that result in the further displacement and suffering of the civilian population.”

On Thursday, Madnoje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the U.N. in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Tsuti General Laurent Nkunda’s rebels had battled government forces in eastern Nyzanale, North Kiva province on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Nkunda’s forces — the National Congress for the Defense of the People — fought pro-government Mai Mai militias, in Kiwanja, also in eastern Congo, said Kevin Kennedy, a spokesman for the U.N. mission.

“We encourage all the groups to restore the cease-fire,” he said.

Nkunda said his forces had not broken the cease-fire.

“We declared for a cease-fire, it was a unilateral cease-fire. And we ask the government to stop the attacks, even their allies,” he told CNN Thursday.

“So they attacked us,” he said.

“What we are asking for is only a cease-fire, then we go for peace talks and we ask the government to accept us through talks and to have a neutral mediator. That’s what we are asking. It’s not so many things.”

The rebel leader said the Mai Mai had been dressed in civilian clothing during Wednesday’s fighting, and he vehemently denied allegations that his forces had killed civilians.

“It’s not true,” Nkunda said. “These Mai Mai, these militia were in civil dress. … We asked the civilian population to get behind the front lines. So, the population were behind the front line,” he said.

“We cannot kill a civil population,” he said.

On Tuesday, the rebels battled Mai Mai fighters near Rutshuru, near Kiwanja.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said surgical teams had treated 50 people from Wednesday and Thursday’s fighting.

“Thousands of people who have fled the fighting in Kiwanja have sought shelter on the road between the two towns, in churches, and even inside Rutshuru hospital,” MSF said. It did not say if the people treated were civilians.

Anne Taylor, the head of the MSF mission in Goma, issued a statement saying, “MSF provides health care to all patients without discrimination.”

Around 250,000 people were displaced as a result of fighting in recent months, the United Nations estimates.

Tensions in the Congo have festered since its civil wars in the mid-to-late 1990s and since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Nkunda has repeatedly blamed the Congolese government for failing to protect the Tutsi tribe from Rwandan Hutu militia in Congo. Critics have alleged Nkunda to be a puppet of Rwanda.

The ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis kills 45,000 people in Congo every month, according to a January 2008 report from the International Rescue Committee.

Hutu rebels have been active in the jungles of eastern Congo since Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, according to the United Nations. During the 100 days of that genocide the Hutu majority killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, the United Nations estimates.

• In another development, a correspondent for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has been freed — three days after militiamen kidnapped him in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the paper said Friday.

Belgian reporter Thomas Scheen, the newspaper’s longtime Africa correspondent, was captured by Mai Mai militiamen Tuesday after getting stuck between the lines of fighting in the conflict area, the paper said.

The paper said Scheen and his two Congolese staff are now with U.N. peacekeepers and are doing well.

“We would like to thank everyone in Germany, Belgium and Congo who worked so hard in the past days to free Thomas Scheen, especially the German Foreign Ministry, the Belgian authorities and MONUC,” said the newspaper’s publisher, Berthold Kohler.

CNN.com

Hundreds of thousands fled Goma, the regional capital, and the surrounding countryside in a mass exodus last week when Congolese Tutsi rebel forces commanded by the renegade general Laurent Nkunda captured several key towns and threatened to attack the strategic eastern city.

Defended by only 150 United Nations troops, Goma is directly in the path of rebel forces.

“People are just trying to stay safe. It’s muddy and wet and a lot of people are sick,” said one local aid worker.

A Red Cross spokesman in Kinshasa, the capital, said: “The situation is catastrophic. There is no other word.”

Nkunda’s forces were dug in yesterday just nine miles from Goma, where truckloads of drunken government troops had earlier looted stores, murdered men and raped women as they retreated in panic from the rebel advance.

In one typical incident they shot a barman dead because he failed to serve their drinks quickly enough.

Yesterday Goma, which sits on the border with Rwanda, was tense but calm. Residents who risked staying on said government troops were resuming their looting after dark.

Nkunda’s rebel forces also share a reputation for savagery. They are accused of war crimes including tying civilians in sacks and throwing them off a bridge into the Congo river. Nkunda said he had halted his advance and ordered a ceasefire to create a “humanitarian corridor” and allow people to return to their homes.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reported that some refugee camps in rebel-held territory had been “forcibly emptied, looted and burnt”. The refugees were in desperate need of help, said Antonio Guterres, its chief.

A woman clutching her brood of young children and looking for shelter said: “We are helpless, powerless.

“We do not believe anyone will treat us well. I am too afraid to go home, but who will feed us here? We feel abandoned.”

The Save the Children charity, which was forced to pull out of Goma after government troops went on the rampage last week, sent an emergency team back into the city yesterday. A priority is reuniting families split up in the chaos. Spokesman Dominic Nutt said: “A high number of young children have been separated from their parents in their bid to escape.”

The violence plaguing the eastern Congo was largely born out of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda when 800,000 people, most of them Tutsis, were massacred by Hutu militias. A further destabilising factor is the struggle for control of the region’s huge mineral wealth.

Nkunda accuses the Congolese government of still supporting the Rwandan Hutu militias who took part in the genocide and then, after being defeated, crossed the border to find sanctuary in eastern Congo.

They allied themselves with the Congolese army as the Congo was plunged into a wider war between 1998 and 2003 which sucked in Rwanda and neighbouring African countries. Up to 5m people died.

It is the fear that the present fighting could rekindle conflict on such a scale that has led to the international scramble to solve the crisis.

Any deployment of British troops in the Congo will alarm British commanders at a time when the army is overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq. If an European Union force is deployed, as the French suggested last week, Britain may have little choice. It is the so-called stand-by country which would be obliged to contribute.

Nkunda last week made it clear his men would resist any international force that took sides in the conflict, making the deployment of an EU force fraught with risk.

Times Online