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At least 130,000 people had been displaced around the towns of Beni and Lubero, northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Mission in the DRC (known as MONUC) said on Thursday.
It said 23,000 internally displaced people had come from Oicha (30 km north of Beni), 40,800 from Mangina (30 km northwest of Beni) and the remainder from Rengeti and other neighbouring locations, MONUC announced on Radio Okapi.
The Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Kisangani-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K-ML) had accused the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo (MLC) of attacking its positions in Rengeti on Wednesday, RCD-K-ML Secretary-General Kolosso Sumahili told IRIN. "According to the report that we have, it is a humanitarian catastrophe," he added.
Meanwhile, MLC has accused RCD-K-ML of attacking its ally, RCD-National (RCD-N).
"There are still some clashes, but we do not think that it is a proper attack or a continuation of fighting," Mounoubayi Madnodge, the MONUC spokesman, said. "We think that these clashes are due to communication problems between the commanders of the military movements and the groups themselves. We don't think that these clashes have compromised either the ceasefire agreement or the deployment of MONUC in the region."
Throughout Thursday Beni remained calm. The coordinator with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Beni, Alexandre Gashangi, said on Radio Okapi that a humanitarian intervention would begin with an explanation over the airwaves of its purpose. "Our explanations are addressing both the military and civilian populations," he said.
The leaders of the three rival militias fighting along the Isiro-Beni axis of northeastern DRC signed a ceasefire agreement on Monday.
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
