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A UN humanitarian assessment mission sent to Baraka on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in South Kivu Province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was on Saturday surrounded by unidentified armed forces and ordered to leave the area immediately, Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), told IRIN.
"As they landed, the helicopter was surrounded by a hundred unidentified armed soldiers, who ordered them to take off immediately," he said.
"We reported the incident to RCD-Goma officials," he added. "They presented their apologies and explained that there was a lack of coordination between their military headquarters and troops on the ground."
The region is under the control of the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) rebel movement that had given MONUC permission to land in Baraka. Toure said that another mission, including MONUC military observers, would be sent within the coming days.
The assessment team had travelled without any problems on Friday to the town of Minembwe, but was denied access by officers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) to internally displaced persons in the region due to insecurity. The RPA has been battling a popular uprising in the region by ethnic Tutsis led by a dissident commander of RCD-Goma, Patrick Masunzu. The mission had hoped to open access to South Kivu's high plateau region to deliver aid to thousands of people displaced by fighting.
The mission included representatives from MONUC, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Children's Fund, the World Health Organisation, the UN Development Programme, and a number of local NGOs, Toure said.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
