[In Africa… peace never comes… The blacks can’t live in peace with one another. Jan]

A new humanitarian crisis is brewing in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where about 56 000 people have fled armed groups, out for lucrative mineral resources, that are murdering, raping and burning crops, a United Nations observer in the region said.

The observer, posted in the town of Bunia, said at least 52 people have been killed in recent violence in the Ituri region, close to the border with Uganda. About a thousand had been injured by machete blows, he added.

Thousands of people have fled their homes in the region of Djugu, to the north of Bunia.

Armed groups in the region are aiming “to create a climate of fear in order to keep their grip on the mineral wealth of Ituri, but also to get their hands on customs duties levied on the Ugandan border”, the observer said.

“The militia groups have no hesitation in using inter-ethnic tension to inflame the region, whereas in fact they clearly serve gangster-style interests, which have no connection with the conflicts between Hemas and Lendus,” he said, referring to two of the local ethnic groups.

Modibo Traore, who heads a UN relief operation in Bunia, said emergency UN aid has so far prevented a humanitarian crisis.

But the activities of the armed groups make it difficult to guarantee supplies to all the refugees.

In Bunia, witnesses said armed groups have engaged in a spree of kidnapping, rapes, murders and arsons in recent violence.

Since 1999, about 50 000 people have been killed in the inter-ethnic clashes where the traumatised villagers prefer to leave behind their belongings than fall prey to the militia.

Close to 1 000 witnesses, many of whom have gunshot or machette wounds, accuse the National Intergrationist Front (FNI) and Congolese Patriotic Union (UPC), the main armed groups in Ituri, of being behind the clashes.

Emergency UN and non-governmental funds have “for the moment tempered a major crisis”, Traore said.

But, since last December, heightened insecurity in Djungu has restricted humanitarian aid to refugees.

The UN mission in the DRC last month decried an “attempt to destabilise Ituri” and called on the warlords, without mentioning names, to stop the violence.

Five warlords have since been promoted to the rank of general in the DRC army.

“Since their promotion, they moved to Kinshasa and have said nothing to their troops,” a humanitarian official in Ituri lamented. “Their absence has prompted the emergence of new warlords, who continue to hold the villagers at ransom.”

The fresh wave of violence has also slowed down the disarmament process that began last September in Ituri, in which about 15 000 militia members are targeted. Until now only about 3 200 of them have been disarmed.

Ross Mountain, the UN humanitarian coordinator in DRC, said if the violence continues it could cause a “serious humanitarian crisis”.

A Kinshasa-based political analyst also predicted that the violence might jeopardise the DRC’s transition process just four months ahead of the country’s general elections scheduled for June. — Sapa-AFP