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

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:

“We agree,“ Nkunda said in French, but he had asked Obasanjo to tell President Joseph Kabila’s government to also respect a suspension of military hostilities.

“We support his mission … he has got support from the international community … we are behind him and we are going to do our part so we can get on with this peace,“ the rebel leader, wearing a grey suit, told reporters earlier in English.

Obasanjo met Nkunda at his home village in the foothills of the Virunga mountains, close to the Rwanda and Uganda borders. As they met, fresh fighting flared between rebel and government forces to the northwest of Jomba in North Kivu province.

Obasanjo, who held talks on Saturday with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, is seeking to prevent the fighting in North Kivu from escalating into a repeat of a wider 1998-2003 Congo war that sucked in six neighbouring states.

The U.N. envoy, who flew back to the North Kivu provincial capital Goma, said the talks with Nkunda went “extremely well“.

“Nkunda wants to maintain a ceasefire but it’s like dancing the tango. You can’t do it alone,“ Obasanjo said. He and Nkunda, who carried a cane topped with an eagle head, danced with rebels and children outside the Jomba church compound where they met.

Weeks of combat between Nkunda’s Tutsi rebels and government troops and their militia allies have displaced around a quarter of a million civilians, creating what aid agencies call a “catastrophic“ humanitarian situation in east Congo.

Earlier, U.N. peacekeepers reported heavy artillery, rocket and small arms fire near the village of Ndeko, about 110 km (70 miles) north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Nkunda played down the latest clash, saying it was “not a problem“ and he had contacted the government to try to end it.

A U.N. military spokesman, Lt-Col Jean-Paul Dietrich, told Reuters: “It is difficult to say who started it but we can confirm it was between the CNDP and the army. We treated six army soldiers who were wounded and need to be evacuated“.

ETHNIC ENEMIES

The roots of the North Kivu conflict stem from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, when extremist Hutu militias killed about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus before fleeing into Congo.

That led to two wars and a humanitarian crisis that killed more than five million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

In 2004, Nkunda rejected peace deals that ended the last war. He accuses Kabila of arming and using a Rwandan Hutu rebel group, the FDLR, which includes perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, to fight with the weak and chaotic Congolese army.

For his part, the Congolese president accuses neighbouring Rwanda, whose soldiers fought in Congo’s last war, ostensibly to hunt down the Hutu militia, of supporting Nkunda’s rebellion.

Nkunda spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa blamed government forces for the latest fighting on Sunday. “The army attacked us this morning and, as we warned, we have decided to push them back until we no longer consider them a threat.“

But he said this would not derail the peace talks. “He (Obasanjo) is not blind. He will see who is responsible for the clashes. While he talks peace, the government attacks us.“

The Congolese army was not available for comment.

Nkunda initially took up arms saying he was fighting to defend fellow Tutsis in Congo from attack by the Rwandan Hutu FDLR. But, after marching to the gates of Goma last month, he is now calling for direct negotiations with the president.

Kabila has so far rejected talks.

WELT ONLINE

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

It said the number of displaced people was growing by the hour and that the precarious security situation was making it difficult to deliver aid.

Intense diplomatic efforts are under way to end the crisis, which has displaced a total of 250,000 people.

A tense ceasefire is holding in and around the eastern city of Goma.

Rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda says he is fighting to protect his Tutsi community from attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels, some of whom are accused of taking part in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

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

Gen Nkunda has also objected to government plans for foreign involvement in exploiting the country’s vast mineral wealth.

The Congolese government has refused to negotiate with Gen Nkunda, calling him a terrorist.

‘Extremely unsafe’

With the lull in the fighting and a desperate shortage of food and water in Goma, thousands of people who sought refuge there have been leaving the city, heading to the village of Kibati, about 12km (7.4 miles) to the north.

The BBC’s Peter Greste in Goma says the road from the city is choked with human misery.

For mile after mile, it is full of families bent forward with their lives on their backs: stoves, food, clothes, bedding and children.

Aid agencies have all but stopped work because of security fears.

“The whole population in Goma, and around Goma are feeling extremely unsafe,” Red Cross spokesman Marcal Izard told the BBC.

“They need food, water, shelter and, most of all, protection, [and] some sense of knowing that they will not be attacked, that they will be spared by this new round of clashes.”

A spokesman for the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR, told the BBC that the situation was “extremely critical”.

A Congolese aid-worker based in Goma, Godefroid Marhenge, told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that some displaced people were without water or shelter, and “in desperate need of humanitarian assistance”.

Oxfam and other leading international aid agencies have withdrawn international staff from the city, where a main hospital as well as numerous businesses and homes have been looted.

Gen Nkunda said on Thursday that he was opening a “humanitarian corridor” for people to return to their homes, and so that aid could reach those trapped between his forces and UN soldiers backing up government troops in the city.

Our correspondent said that instead of an open corridor, he found people hurrying back to Goma.

“Someone has been shooting at us,” one breathless woman said. “We can’t go any further.”

But those who did reach Kibati told the BBC that they had more chance of getting food in the forests and bushes around the village than inside Goma.

Aid group Mercy Corps has begun to distribute water to the new arrivals.

Further north, the UNHCR says that it has received reports that several camps for internally displaced people near Rutshuru, about 90km (56 miles) north of Goma, have been forcibly emptied, looted and burned.

About 50,000 people are living in camps in the area, and aid workers are in the process of trying to verify the reports, the UNHRC said.

Overstretched peacekeepers

After several days of fighting, Gen Nkunda declared the ceasefire late on Wednesday, and his Tutsi forces are positioned some 15km (nine miles) from Goma – the provincial capital of North Kivu.

However, Gen Nkunda has threatened to take the city unless UN peacekeepers guarantee the ceasefire and security in Goma.

Looting, killings and rapes were reported in the city on Thursday, much of it blamed on retreating Congolese troops.

Meanwhile, intense international diplomatic efforts are going in a bid to maintain the ceasefire and bring an end to the fighting:

• The parliament in DR Congo has called on government to negotiate with Gen Nkunda, although President Joseph Kabila has previously refused to do so

• UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he is “deeply concerned” about the situation, and has called on regional leaders to take concrete measures to broker a peace deal

• EU are diplomats meeting in Brussels to discuss whether to send troops to back up UN peacekeepers, after EU envoy Louis Michel met Mr Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame

• The EU is also to discuss sending troops to the area to aid the humanitarian effort

• An African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council is to hold crisis talks at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa

• US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer has held talks with Mr Kabila in DR Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.

BBC NEWS

The assessment came while thousands of Congolese took advantage of a fragile day-old cease-fire to flee the regional capital of Goma in eastern Congo.

The U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or MONUC, is the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission, with more than 17,000 troops posted at duty stations throughout the vast jungle-carpeted country.

“We are looking at a MONUC at the absolute limit of its capacity,” said U.N. spokesman Kevin Kennedy. “It cannot be everywhere. It cannot respond to every incident.”

Nine civilians were killed Wednesday evening by drunken soldiers — described by locals as wearing army uniforms while looting in Goma, U.N. radio reported.

In addition, tens of thousands of people were fleeing the city Thursday, clogging roads and making it difficult for U.N. soldiers to move around. Fighting also limited the presence of relief groups, contributing to the humanitarian crisis.

“We want peace for people in the region,” rebel leader Laurent Nkunda told the Associated Press by telephone after halting his advance on Goma and calling the cease-fire.

Mr. Nkunda began his insurgency three years ago, charging that ethnic Tutsis were excluded during Congo’s transition to democracy. He resumed fighting in August in defiance of a U.N.-brokered truce and his troops this week drove to the outskirts of Goma.

Frustration with the limits of the U.N. forces has led to popular demonstrations against the peacekeepers, one of whom was seriously injured.

Mr. Kennedy acknowledged Thursday that MONUC was unable to meet the “very high expectations” of the Congolese people.

“There have been a number of instances where the perception of the population is that MONUC had not done enough” to counter rebels or government offensives and “consequently MONUC was seen as the one at fault.”

The senior U.N. official in Kinshasa, Alan Doss, asked the Security Council earlier this month to temporarily authorize at least two more battalions, two more police units, two companies of special forces as well as air, engineering and intelligence gathering assets for the Goma area.

Combatants have changed over the years and so have their targets. Many continue to fight along Hutu and Tutsi ethnic lines, an extension of hostilities that erupted into the Rwanda genocide of 1996. Other groups are warring over access to precious minerals and timber.

Mr. Nkunda is often accused of being tied to the Tutsi-led Rwandan government.

But U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, who arrived in the Congolese capital Thursday, has said there is no evidence that Mr. Nkunda’s forces are backed by Rwanda.

Ms. Frazer is to meet with Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Mr. Doss, among others, to try to restart the political process that halted fighting in the past, the State Department said Thursday, offering few details because the situation is so “fluid.”

Washington Times

The Kondoli family walked for three days from Rutshuru this week to escape an assault on the town by the region’s Tutsi rebel chief, Laurent Nkunda, in the stricken region’s latest surge in fighting.

Rutshuru was only home for the Kondolis for a few months, another stop in a perpetual search for safety in a region where conflict has claimed millions of lives – mostly through disease and malnutrition although mass murder and mass rape have also taken their toll – and continues to take hundreds more each day.

The Kondolis are among more than 1 million people forced from their homes by conflict in eastern Congo over the past two years, some repeatedly.

“Sometimes these men would come and just want our food or money. I don’t know who they were,” said Kondoli, a 33-year-old banana grower.

“We stayed because we could grow more food. But then someone attacked last year and killed our neighbours and so we ran away to Rutshuru.

“We lived in Rutshuru for about a year after the Tutsis took our village. We think it was the Tutsis but there were so many men with guns around. They came to our village before and raped the women. Some of the women ran away after that but we stayed. Now we have run away again.”

Kondoli was pushing a makeshift wooden cart with the family’s bedding and pots and pans, but it looked as if it was about to fall apart.

His wife, Riziki, carried their youngest child, just a few months old, the entire way. She lifts the wrap she had tied around her to reveal the drawn face of a girl who looks as exhausted as her mother. The two other children, aged five and three, stare silently.

But even after arriving on the outskirts of Goma, what they hope will be their new refuge, they are not safe.

Congolese soldiers have given up defending the road to the town and fled en masse into the town, where some drank, shot wildly, looted homes and shops. Others raped.

A UN-backed radio station said nine people were killed on Wednesday, including shopkeepers who were shot by soldiers who wanted to strip the stores. The disorder was contained but Goma’s residents fear worse will come as military order collapses further.

Still, afraid as they are of their own army, people in the town are terrified of Nkunda’s forces. Like most rebel groups in the region it has a bloody reputation particularly after Nkunda’s troops rampaged through another town, Bukavu, at the bottom of Lake Kivu in 2005. The renegade fighters went house to house looting and raping. Among the victims were teenagers and girls as young as three.

With the government forces abandoning their positions, the road to Goma is open to the rebels.

Nkunda taunted the UN yesterday by saying he could push past its peacekeepers and enter the town any time he chooses. He may be right. The largely Indian UN contingent has failed to stop the rebel advance so far despite sending in helicopter gunships to back the government’s army.

But for now Nkunda says he will hold off from moving on the town. Meanwhile, refugees continue to struggle south toward Goma, away from the sporadic fighting.

The UN says more than 55,000 have already arrived, many from a refugee camp north of the town.

The few with vehicles have sometimes had them commandeered at gunpoint by retreating, and often drunk, government troops.

The rest trudge slowly with their bedding and a few belongings on their head and children dragged along or strapped to their backs.

Most are desperate for some rest but even more desperate not to be caught in another advance by Nkunda. But for some it is too much, they simply cannot go on.

Esparance Kasindi is barely able to hold her body upright as she slumps on the coarse volcanic rock against the bundle that is all she has been able to carry from her home. The 29-year-old mother has two children, boys aged eight and nine. She says she has stopped because her sons can go no further but she looks in no better condition than them.

“How much further to Goma?” she asks. “How long to walk?”

She has been on the road since Monday, fleeing a village as word spread that Nkunda’s troops were coming. She said she begged the fleeing government soldiers for a ride, for food, for water.

“They did not even look at me. They are strong men. They could walk but they ride while my children walk. This is the situation we have in this country.”

More than 1,000 people have already crossed into Rwanda, and thousands more have headed for Uganda.

Nkunda went on the offensive two months ago after accusing the government of breaching one of a round of ceasefires since a peace agreement collapsed a year ago.

That accord between eastern Congo’s factions saw Nkunda and his 8,000 troops integrated into the national army. But he pulled out months later and began attacking government troops he accused of collaborating with Hutu forces that fled into Congo after carrying out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Nkunda says he is fighting to protect the hundreds of thousands of Tutsi in eastern Congo still threatened by the Hutu rebels. But the government and UN call him a “bandit” and the primary cause of instability in the region.

The Congolese army has been training troops and preparing them to combat Nkunda for months, but when the conflict flared again the government’s troops fled in disarray in the face of an apparently more disciplined and dedicated force.

Nkunda’s army has seized swathes of territory in recent weeks, sending about 200,000 people fleeing from their homes. Hundreds of thousands more were driven from their homes earlier this year and late last.

Nkunda told news agencies yesterday he is calling for a ceasefire and talks with the government aimed at resolving the conflict. His demands include the disarming of Hutu rebels and revision of a £2.5bn deal that gives China access to the region’s mineral wealth.

But he continues to menace Goma even if it is not clear that he really needs or wants the town. He would then have to control a hostile population while keeping the army and UN at bay across other parts of eastern Congo.

Nkunda may also come under pressure from his tacit backers in Rwanda, who deny Congolese accusations of sending troops to fight with the renegade general. Rwanda views Nkunda as useful in keeping Hutu rebels from its border but it would likely prove an international diplomatic embarrassment if the rebels were to take Goma, and kill and assault civilians.

The UN security council has demanded an end to the fighting. Europe is talking about sending troops, led by France. The EU’s aid chief, Louis Michel, met Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila, to see what could be done.

But there is generally only contempt for the UN in Congo and little expectation among the people fleeing their homes or Goma’s residents that any of it will make very much difference. People in eastern Congo know international attention will pass and the killing, hunger, displacement, disease and rape will go on as before – as it has for years.

“People in this town know they will have to look after themselves,” says Boniface Kakera, a Goma-born cross-border trader. “We see the UN but we don’t see it protecting us. Our army is a joke. The soldiers join to loot not to fight. Only the most desperate who have no money will join.”

So what will he do if Nkunda’s rebels come? Flee across the border a few hundred yards away, he said.

“I will go to Rwanda. It is the enemy but it will be the safest place to be,” he says.

Congo: Between rebels on the rampage and army on the run | World news | The Guardian

The military spokesman for Rwanda’s Tutsi-led government immediately denied the Congolese allegations.

A helicopter gunship from the United Nations mission flew high in the sky toward the battlefield and Uruguayan peacekeepers deployed on a hilltop ridge.

The 17,000-strong peacekeeping force in Congo is stretched to the limit with the upsurge of fighting and needs more troops quickly from wherever it can get them, the U.N.’s top envoy to Congo, Alan Doss said.

The force is the U.N.’s biggest mission but its failure to halt the rebellion has enraged Congolese who attacked U.N. compounds in Goma with rocks this week. People regularly stone peacekeepers’ vehicles.

Bomb blasts, rocket fire and screaming mortars could be heard Wednesday from three miles (5 kilometers) outside the city.

The bombardment frightened tens of thousands of refugees and stirred dangerously growing anti-Tutsi sentiment in a region where decades of conflict with the majority Hutu reached a cataclysm in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. More than a half million Tutsis were slaughtered in 100 days.

“It’s the ‘long noses’ from Rwanda who are bombing us, the Rwanda Tutsi,” refugee farmer Gaspar Sebigore shouted at a village overrun by people fleeing the fighting.

The tall, sharp-featured Tutsi used to be the aristocracy in the region and held sway over the Hutu, a generally shorter, stockier tribe with flat facial features.

In the days after the genocide, more than a million Hutus fled victorious Tutsi forces in Rwanda and came to Congo where they regrouped in a brutal militia that helps fuel the continuing conflict in eastern Congo.

Congo’s army “wants to divert the international community’s attention from the fact that they are collaborating with the masterminds of the Rwandan genocide, because the conflict in Congo revolves around those genocidal forces,” Rwandan Maj. Jill Rutaremara told The Associated Press from Arusha, Tanzania, where he was attending a regional meeting on peace and security.

Congo has long alleged that Rwanda is reinforcing the fighters of renegade Congolese Gen. Laurent Nkunda, a claim U.N. officials say is unfounded.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday he was speaking to the presidents of Congo and Rwanda to resolve the crisis and that Europe and the United States plan to send diplomats to both countries to try to negotiate a peaceful solution. He spoke in Manila, the Philippines.

Congo turned to neighbor Angola for help. International Cooperation Minister Raymond Tshibanda asked the Angolan president Tuesday night for “a promise of engagement, help in saving lives, defending territorial integrity and establishing the state’s authority throughout the country.”

Angolan state radio indicated Congo was seeking primarily political and diplomatic support. But there are fears the latest crisis could again draw in neighboring states. Congo suffered back-to-back wars from 1997 to 2003, including one that embroiled eight African nations in what became a greedy rush at the country’s vast mineral riches. This natural wealth continues to fuel conflict.

Nkunda and Rwanda charge that Congo’s army fights alongside Hutu militiamen. U.N. peacekeepers say some Congolese army officers do work with the militiamen, but that the collaboration is not institutionalized.

Nkunda’s forces said Tuesday that the army had deserted numerous posts on the front line to be defended by Hutu militiamen, saying they had no choice but to fight this traditional enemy.

In Goma, the eastern provincial capital and border town that was flooded by refugees after the genocide, a police jeep crawled through town Wednesday with an officer using a megaphone to try to calm frightened residents.

“There is nothing to fear. Please go about your business,” the policeman said, urging people to open shops, half of which were shuttered. One businessman said they fear riots and looting.

The policeman told a crowd gathered on a corner to discuss the crisis to disperse. “We don’t want people standing about outside.”

Many residents said they are staying home and keeping their children from school.

“We can only pray. We are traumatized, knowing that the fighting is going on just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city,” said resident John Kanyunyu.

On the road to the battlefield, jeeps carrying army officers sped along, stopping to give instructions to soldiers carrying rocket launchers and assault rifles. One smashed into a motorcycle, slightly injuring two civilians among refugees who have taken over a school.

There, where many people slept in the open beside their goats and pigs, even the children were yelling anti-Tutsi comments.

“We’re scared of the Tutsis. They are too strong,” said 10-year-old Musafiri Ntsaboningba. “They’ve taken everything, even our homes now.”

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