East DRCongo fighting sends 13,000 refugees into Uganda
KAMPALA (AFP) — Fighting in the lawless eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has forced 13,000 refugees to flee into neighbouring Uganda over the past 10 days, the UN refugee agency said Monday.
They have fled from the exceedingly violent Rutshuru district of DRC's Nord-Kivu province, where the army has been fighting insurgent rebels since the end of August.
The refugees were arriving at an average of 800 people a day, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.
The UNHCR had began preparing to relocate the refugees from a reception centre at Nyakabanda near the border to Nakivale, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) away. The centre currently held 12,000 people.
Another 1,500 new refugees were still in the DRC's Bunagana area and UNHCR officials asked refugee leaders to verify how many people wished to be transferred to the refugee camp.
Forces loyal to cashiered ex-general Laurent Kunda fought Mai Mai militia near Bunagana on October 20 and 21.
The ex-general has been waging an on-off war against the army and Mai Mai militia, a group of Hutu extremists who massacred some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 and melted in DRC's vast jungles.
"Many (refugees) said they are worn out by successive waves of displacement from their homes and prefer to wait longer for peace to return to North Kivu," said Adan Ilmi, the UNHCR emergency response coordinator in Kisoro.
Over the past two years, the UNHCR has provided assistance to more than 15,000 refugees who decided to settle permanently in Uganda. The east African country currently hosts 216,000 refugees including 31,000 from DRC, 162,000 from Sudan and 17,000 from Rwanda.
