Kampala_(dpa) _ Most African meetings are dominated by issues related to calamities - wars, famines and natural disasters that plague the crisis-prone continent.

Now Africa's technocrats and politicians are at it again, converging in the Ugandan capital Kampala to tackle one of the continent's most pressing problems: refugees and internally displaced people.

The Special African Union summit on refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) began Monday and the delegates are mulling how to handle the estimated 17 million people who have fled their

In addition to the tens of thousands uprooted from their homes, 1,173 people have been killed and 1673 abducted between December 2008 and May 2009 in the Haut and Bas Uele regions, according to the United Nations.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said the inhabitants "live in constant fear and face a critical humanitarian situation."

"My country has been destroyed," the 65-year-old trader complains.

"With all of their weapons," he says, motioning towards the United Nations vehicles, "they could have stopped the war long ago if they weren't more interested in sitting around eating peanuts and making money."

"I don't think the war will ever

The men, who wore uniforms, robbed a group of aid workers, among them three women. The two other women were also victims of sexual aggression, the paper said.

It remained unclear whether the culprits were members of a rebel militia or soldiers of the Congolese army. The non-governmental organization the victim worked for was not named.

The aid workers were urgently repatriated

He was a farm labourer, she stayed home to mind the children.

But that all changed on November 29, when the city of 33,000 was captured by rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda and his National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).

The Congolese army, which had controlled the city, fled. The CNDP then began operations to flush out pro-government rebels.

The New Vision newspaper said the LRA, which has been fighting a guerrilla war for over two decades, attacked the villages of Tola and Libombi in north-east DR Congo, indiscriminately burning and hacking people to death.

"The rebels set ablaze a church called Bima in the Democratic Republic of Congo at midnight as the faithful

Major Paddy Ankunda, Uganda's military spokesman, said Monday that forces from Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and southern Sudan had successfully destroyed bases in the north-eastern DRC used by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), scattering the rebels.

However, many of fleeing rebels made

There was no sign of Joseph Kony, head of the notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), army spokesman major Paddy Akunda told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Radio news reports said scores of religious and political leaders from the war-ravaged region have been waiting in the bushes of southern Sudan for days for Kony. Many have reportedly grown

Eyewitnesses told the BBC that they had seen what they believed to be Angolan and Zimbabwean soldiers dressed in the uniform of the Congolese army.

"We are seeing soldiers wearing the Congolese army uniform here in town but they are not speaking the same language as us," an anonymous resident in Goma told the British broadcaster.