KIBATI – A 12-vehicle U.N. aid convoy set off yesterday to go behind rebel lines in eastern Congo, carrying medical supplies for clinics looted by retreating government troops. It was the first humanitarian aid delivery behind rebel lines since fighting broke out in August.
U.N. peacekeepers escorted the trucks from the provincial capital of Goma, and both the Congolese army and the rebel leader assured the convoy’s safe passage, said Gloria Fernandez, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in eastern Congo.
She said medical supplies and tablets to purify water were the priority in this shipment. Another convoy on Tuesday would be bringing food for some of the 250,000 refugees displaced by fighting in this central African nation, she said.
Food, however, was the critical issue for most people.
“Everybody is hungry, everybody,” said Jean Bizy, 25, a teacher.
Rebels were allowing farmers to reach Goma, the provincial capital, in trucks packed with cabbages, onions and spinach. And an Associated Press reporter saw the U.N. convoy stop to deliver a sack of potatoes to U.N. troops in Rugari.
Bizy, who watched as the U.N. troops collected their food, said he has been surviving on wild bananas for days.
Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda went on the offensive Aug. 28 and brought his fighters to the edge of Goma last week before declaring a unilateral cease-fire.
The conflict is fueled by festering ethnic hatred left over from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and Congo’s civil wars from 1996-2002. Nkunda claims the Congolese government has not protected ethnic Tutsis from the Rwandan Hutu militia that escaped to Congo after helping slaughter a half-million Rwandan Tutsis.
All sides are believed to fund fighters by illegally mining Congo’s vast mineral riches, giving them no financial interest in stopping the fighting.
Tens of thousands of people in Kibati have received little food aid since they fled their homes a week ago. Fernandez said families here have been forced to move four or five times in the past 10 days.
“They go around in circles ... fleeing the movement of troops and the lines of combat,” she said.
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