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DR Congo

Relief Needed for War-Torn Congolese City

Written by Stephanie Kriner, Staff Writer, DisasterRelief.org, with news reports
Aid agencies surveying the war-ravaged Congolese city of Kisangani have encountered a chaotic scene. Hundreds of thousands of hungry residents who hid in surrounding forests during fighting between Uganda and Rwanda troops have begun returning home. They face a city with a crumbled infrastructure and have no access to food, water or medical attention.

The relief agencies, finally able to enter the city due to a recent ceasefire, warned that some 600,000 people without electricity, water and medical care are threatened by hunger and epidemics. During the constant artillery fire, it was too dangerous for relief workers to bring humanitarian aid to the stranded civilians.

As the fighting died down, frightened civilians emerged from their homes this week to take advantage of the unusual calm. People fetched water from the Congo River. Meanwhile, thousands of refugees are returning home on foot from surrounding forests and other parts of town where they have taken refuge. They have returned to homes damaged by gunfire and streets littered with the corpses of dead civilians and soldiers.

Rwanda and Uganda support different rebel groups in a war that has been raging since August 1998 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have fought to gain control of Kisangani, a center known for its lucrative diamond trade. The two countries' presidents agreed to a ceasefire last week, but it was ignored by troops. Finally on Monday, the fighting stopped and a group of unarmed UN observers were stationed to monitor the ceasefire. Military officials from each side are expected to meet soon to work out a speedy withdrawal of their armies from Kisangani.

An estimated 1.7 million people have died over the past 22 months as a result of the conflict. Most deaths were the result of the war-related collapse of the country's health infrastructure. "On average, some 2,600 people are dying every day in this war and our research found that the first months of the year 2000 were even worse than 1999," said epidemiologist Les Roberts.

City hospitals and clinics have been overburdened by the demands to treat innocent bystanders wounded by stray bullets. An International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) assessment revealed that more than 1,100 people - most of them Congolese civilians - were injured in the last six days of the conflict alone.

During the fighting, doctors were unable to reach hospitals to treat patients due to the risk of being shot to death. The chaotic violence even threatened those who made it to be treated. In one case that typifies the dangerous situation, an ICRC team visiting local hospitals witnessed a little girl getting hit in the head by a stray bullet as she lay in bed. In addition to the constant threat of violence, they encountered hospitals in desperate need of medical supplies and power generators.

Hospitals and health centers are stretched beyond their capacities with the sick and injured, and relief agencies are struggling to make up for the slack. The ICRC and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) have set up emergency medical centers to help the packed hospitals tend to the injured. Médecins Sans Frontières also is opening a cholera center to prevent an outbreak of the disease due to a lack of clean drinking water.

Humanitarian groups warned that people were in dire need of food, water and shelter. "We are deeply dismayed about the situation facing civilians in Kisangani, especially children and women, many of whom are already malnourished," a group of UN agencies issued in a statement.

Relief workers also urged local officials to restore water supplies and electricity to the area. They reported that nearly every home had been damaged by artillery fire, and that people were begging in the streets for food and water. Polio vaccination stocks in need of refrigeration were threatened by the power outages and U.N. workers feared that a planned immunization campaign was in jeopardy.

In addition, the ICRC estimates that nearly 18,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, including more than 7,000 people in seven camps in Kisangani and some 10,000 more a few miles west of the city.

Relief agencies rushed in to help the injured and hungry as soon as the ceasefire was declared. ICRC aircraft landed recently in Kisangani, the third largest city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with medical supplies and other assistance. The humanitarian organization also has distributed chlorine so that the city's inhabitants can purify contaminated water.

Humanitarian agencies are organizing other relief flights into Kisangani to take place over the next few days. But emergency relief will barely begin to resolve the suffering left by the war, which prevented humanitarian help from reaching the country, WFP spokesman Wagdi Othman told Reuters in Abidjan. "Aid flights are only a temporary solution. Humanitarian corridors must be opened, especially on the Congo river, to alleviate the suffering of the population of Kisangani."

DisasterRelief.org is a unique partnership between the American Red Cross, IBM and CNN dedicated to providing information about disasters and their relief operations worldwide. The three-year-old website is a leading disaster news source and also serves as a conduit for those wishing to donate to disaster relief operations around the globe through the international Red Cross movement.

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DisasterRelief
DisasterRelief.org is a unique partnership between the American Red Cross, IBM and CNN dedicated to providing information about disasters and their relief operations worldwide. The three-year-old website is a leading disaster news source and also serves as a conduit for those wishing to donate to disaster relief operations around the globe through the international Red Cross movement. American Red Cross disaster assistance is free, made possible by voluntary donations of time and money from the American people. To help the victims of disaster, you may make a secure online credit card donation or call 1-800-HELP NOW (1-800-435-7669) or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Or you may send your donation to your local Red Cross or to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013. The American Red Cross is dedicated to helping make families and communities safer at home and around the world. The Red Cross is a volunteer-led humanitarian organization that annually provides almost half the nation's blood supply, trains nearly 12 million people in vital life-saving skills, mobilizes relief to victims in more than 60,000 disasters nationwide, provides direct health services to 2.5 million people, assists international disaster and conflict victims in more than 20 countries, and transmits more than 1.4 million emergency messages to members of the Armed Forces and their families. If you would like information on Red Cross services and programs please contact your local Red Cross. © Copyright, The American National Red Cross. All Rights Reserved.