Relief agencies gear up to help newly displaced

Relief agencies are again gearing up to deliver urgently needed aid to thousands of people displaced by a resurgence of fighting between dissident and loyalist government troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN official told IRIN on Friday.

"They are in a precarious position," Jean-Marc Cordaro, the official, said about the displaced.

Cordaro, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Bukavu, South Kivu Province, said OCHA, the UN’s Children's Fund, the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization, as well as the NGOs International Rescue Committee and Malteser would deliver food aid, non-food items and water. They would also provide health care and sanitation to the IDPs, he added.

The fighting between loyalist forces and the dissidents loyal to Gen Laurent Nkunda resumed two weeks ago. Fighting is concentrated in the area north of the town of Kalehe, and has sent two groups of IDPs fleeing in different directions.

Cordaro said 30,000 people from villages close to Kalehe had sought refuge in and around the town, and on the banks of Lake Kivu, and that UN agencies and their humanitarian partners were ready to start providing relief.

Meanwhile, he said, the second wave of displaced persons, mostly Kinyarwanda-speaking residents of the area, have fled from Kalehe north to the high plateau towns of Numbi, Shanje, and Chebumba. They are to be cared for by OCHA’s office in Goma.