Fresh fighting, further displacements

Fresh fighting has been reported in Angola from several fronts across the country in recent days creating further displacements of people and exacerbating a "catastrophic" humanitarian situation. As Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos left for the Mozambique capital Maputo to seek support at a summit conference of leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday of a series of ambushes and other clashes. The most serious outbreaks occurred west of the Atlantic coastal city of Benguela, in an area some 450km south of the capital Luanda. Suspected UNITA rebels, they said, had shelled the besieged town of Balombo, on Monday evening, and destroyed a strategic bridge cutting road access from Benguela to the towns of Cubal and Ganda and the country's besieged second city of Huambo. Along the same 150 km stretch of road west from Benguela, 13 people were reported killed and 12 injured when attackers described as "hungry local people" ambushed a commercial convoy at the weekend. Just to the south, in Huila province, another strategic road bridge linking Matala and Kuvango was blown up. "It has been a bad week in a country where the humanitarian crisis is already catastrophic," said an official of the United Nations Humanitarian Coordination Unit (UCAH). "Shelling was also reported from the besieged cities of Huambo, Malanje east of Luanda and Cacolo in the eastern Lunda Sul Province. This has resulted in more displacements of people in Angola." According to the latest UCAH figures on Tuesday, 1,641,889 people have been displaced since January, a month after the breakdown of UN-brokered Lusaka protocol peace accords plunged the country back into civil war. The largest numbers are gathered in and around Huambo, where the displaced people now top the 175,000 mark. In nearby Kuito, a town now sheltering 72,810 newly displaced people, four people were killed and four others wounded in an anti-tank landmine explosion on Monday. Malanje, which has suffered some of the heaviest shelling barrages in recent months, is now crammed with 134,724 displaced people. In the north of the country, independent 'Radio Ecclesia' reported several people missing after an ambush believed to have been carried by UNITA forces near Kissanga, some 400 km northeast of Luanda in Uige Province. Fighting between government forces and UNITA rebels has raged in the area for several weeks. Last week, a UN spokesman said the war was currently claiming an estimated 200 lives a day in Angola, while UCAH reported that the lack of access to tens of thousands of people in need was also resulting in deaths from hunger-related illnesses. Because of insecurity along the roads, or simply because some roads have been cut as happened in recent days, the humanitarian community has been forced to fly relief to besieged cities and towns crammed with displaced people. Often, however, security has forced the postponement of those flights.