UN warns of Humanitarian Disaster in Eastern Congo (DRC)

GENEVA, July 13 (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency warned on Friday of a humanitarian disaster looming in eastern Dem. Rep. of Congo, where more than 160,000 people have fled fighting & atrocities this year.

Despite successful polls last year that chose Joseph Kabila as Congo's first democratically-elected president in more than 40 years, fears were growing of a return to war in North Kivu, which has seen a wave of kidnappings and murders in recent months. Fighting between Tutsi-dominated Congolese army brigades and predominantly Hutu Rwandan rebels has forced more than 160,000 people from their homes this year, bringing the total number of displaced in North Kivu to some 650,000, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"We urge all armed parties in North Kivu to immediately halt direct attacks on civilians and atrocities which include burning of villages, widespread pillaging and raping of women," UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists in Geneva. "With heightened tensions and the build-up of military forces, the situation risks turning into a humanitarian and human rights disaster," she said. "Certainly government forces along with militias and mixed brigades have been implicated in some of these human rights abuses that are going on there."

Aid workers' access to camps for people uprooted in the country -- known as "internally displaced persons" or IDPs in humanitarian circles -- has been restricted because of security concerns, Pagonis said. "We are, indeed, in touch with the U.N. peacekeeping forces and when we realise that some particular IDP sites are in danger, they deploy mobile units to them. But it is a very dangerous area for humanitarian agencies," she said.

The U.N. Security Council voted in May to prolong, at least until the end of the year, the mandate for its 17,000-strong peace force, which allows it to carry out joint military operations with the Congolese army and protect civilians. A 1998-2003 war fuelled by Congo's mineral riches caused an estimated 4 million deaths, mainly through hunger and disease.
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