Thousands Flee Rebel Attacks In Congo

U.N. Peacekeepers Retreat As Rebel General Mounts Attack On City Of 600,000

(AP)  Rebels vowing to take Congo's eastern provincial capital of 600,000 people advanced toward Goma on Tuesday as Congolese troops and U.N. tanks retreated, while tens of thousands of refugees fled to a makeshift shelter.

The sudden influx tripled the size of the camp in Kibati in a matter of hours, said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency. A hundred refugees a day, mostly women and children, were also fleeing across the border into Uganda, that country's Red Cross said.

In Kibati, a few miles from the front line, young men also lobbed rocks at three U.N. tanks with Uruguayan troops heading away from the battlefield.

"What are they doing? They are supposed to protect us," complained Jean-Paul Maombi, a 31-year-old nurse from Kibumba.

On Monday, peacekeepers fired into the air at one U.N. compound that came under a hail of rocks, and city leaders said three people were killed. Mobs hurled the stones to protest the U.N.'s failure to protect them from the rebels, despite having 17,000 peacekeepers in its Congo mission.

Renegade Gen. Laurent Nkunda has vowed to seize Goma, a lakeside city of 600,000 on the border with Rwanda in Central Africa.

Nkunda signed a cease-fire with the government in January, but defected because he said the government showed no interest in protecting his Tutsi people - a tiny minority of 3 percent in east Congo - from Rwandan Hutu militiamen who escaped to Congo after helping perpetrate Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Some half a million Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered in that genocide.

But Nkunda's ambitions have expanded since he launched a fresh onslaught on Aug. 28 - he now declares he will "liberate" all of Congo, a country the size of Western Europe with vast reserves of diamonds, gold and other resources. Congo's vast mineral wealth helped fuel back-to-back wars from 1997-2003.

More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes in the last two months, the U.N. says, joining 1.2 million displaced in previous conflicts in the east. Outbreaks of cholera and diarrhea have killed dozens in camps, compounding the misery.

U.N. efforts to halt Nkunda's rebellion are complicated by the country's rugged terrain, dense tropical forests that roll over hills and mountains with few roads. U.N. provincial chief Hiroute Guebre Selassie told angry civil leaders on Monday that Nkunda's fighters also were using guerrilla tactics.

"We cannot use the helicopters to prevent them advancing, because they hide in the bush, they fight on many fronts, and they hide themselves among the population," she said. "(That) strategy makes it very difficult for us to master the situation."

On Monday, peacekeepers in attack helicopters fired at the rebels trying to stop them taking Kibumba, a village on the main road 30 miles north of Goma. But fleeing civilians say the fighters overran Kibumba anyway.

A U.N. helicopter gunship patrolled the sky Tuesday in Kilimanyoka, seven miles north of Goma. Rebel spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa said he expected the helicopters to soon attack their front line, which he said is within 12 miles of Goma.

The chief U.N. mandate is to protect the population. But since the peace deal it also is helping the Congolese army disarm and repatriate Hutu militiamen - by force if necessary.

Yet Bisimwa, the rebel spokesman, claimed Tuesday the Congolese army has abandoned dozens of its positions to Hutu militiamen.

"It's the Hutus who are on the front line and whom we are fighting, not the army," he said. U.N. peacekeepers "leave us no choice but to fight on."

Nkunda long has charged that Congolese soldiers fight alongside the militia of Hutus, an ethnic majority of about 40 percent in the region.

Some 800 Hutu militiamen have voluntarily returned to Rwanda, the U.N. says, but the fighters recruit and coerce Congolese Hutu children and young men into their ranks daily - far outnumbering those who have returned home.

Civil leaders led by Jason Luneno said if U.N. peacekeepers cannot halt the rebel advance, the peacekeepers should leave Congo and "the people will descend into the streets to demand the government resign."

Tensions also are high on the diplomatic front. Congo this week repeated charges that Rwanda's Tutsi-led government is sending troops across the border to reinforce Nkunda. Rwanda denies the charges and the U.N. says they are unfounded.

The U.N. refugee agency said a team under "tight security" was heading to the village of Kibati to prepare for an influx of refugees. Wailing babies and children with worried frowns were among the thousands there who had no idea where they were headed.

"What can we do? We have nothing," said Maombi.

[pattywagon4]

this is so sad. i wonder what we can do to help? to shed light on this conflict and make it known so what happened in 1994 doesn''t happen agin. so we as americans can not say we just did not know about this. i hope this gets world wide coverage so those rebels know thaey can not attempt what they did in 1994.

[newsdude2]

samsel3 - Wrong Congo. The conflict is in the DRC.

[samsel3]

More innocent people being driven off their oil rich land for multi-national corporations. The UN just lets it happen.

Eni to Invest on Non-Conventional Oil in Congo

05-20-2008 African Oil Journal

Eni SpA signed a deal with Congo Republic for exploration and development of Tar Sands. Studies of a 100-square-km (39-square-mile) section of the deposits at Tchikatanga and Tchikatanga-Makolas indicate recoverable reserves of between 500 million and 2.5 billion barrels, Eni said in a statement. The deposits cover 1,790 square km (690 square miles