Congo camps disease fears
- 00:02:17
- ITN
Congo camps disease fears
Refugees have continued to flee Congo as new clashes erupt between government forces and rebels militia. In the eastern town of Kiwanja, 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Goma - where reportedly 45,000 people have taken refuge - hundreds of displaced people were on the move, heading for a UN camp near the town. Laurent Nkunda, leader of the CNDP, called a ceasefire when his forces reached the outskirts of Goma, but the truce has crumbled. Earlier, Human Rights Watch and local villagers accused Nkunda's rebels of killing dozens of men in civilian clothes who were suspected of supporting Mai Mai militia against the rebels. Nkunda is blamed for a ten-week offensive that has forced 250,000 people from their homes as his fighters captured great swathes of eastern DRC, in a conflict that many fear will spread. The conflict is fuelled by ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of a half-million Tutsis in Rwanda, and DRC's civil wars from 1996-2002. Nkunda defected from the army in 2004, saying he needed to protect his tiny Tutsi minority from Rwandan Hutu militias. He has since expanded his mission to "liberating" the DRC from an allegedly corrupt government. But experts dismiss his mission of deposing DRC President Joseph Kabila - the nation's first freely elected leader in nearly half a century - as fantasy.
ITN | November 9, 2008
