Over 20,000 Congolese flee tribal clashes in the DRC

Kampala (dpa) - Officials manning Uganda's western frontier districts said Thursday that over 20,000 Congolese have fled the tribal clashes in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri region during the past week.
"The displaced are arriving daily in large numbers. Earlier they were fleeing with just herds of cattle but now they are coming with personal belongings.

"In Ntoroko parish, we have recorded 7,159 and in Kanara 1,750 and we have not even counted the others in two other sub-counties,'' said Government Commissioner Erasto Gubaare for the western district of Bundibugyo.

The influx follows the withdrawal last week of thousands of Ugandan troops from former Zaire, being replaced by a United Nations peace keeping force.

"We need assistance from both the United Nations and the Ugandan government. The situation is very alarming,'' Gubaare said by telephone from Bundibugyo town, 380 kilometres from Kampala.

Airlifting of Ugandan troops began from the region's main town of Bunia on April 25 with most troops returning home on foot. The fleeing civilians fear that the U.N. force will not fill the security vacuum that will be left.

The clashes over land are pitting the Hema pastoralists against their Lendu and allied Ngiti tribal enemies and have left hundreds dead in the past few months.

The U.N. peace keeping office in the DRC confirmed Monday that more than 120 people were killed in the region in two days of which began April 20.

The people fleeing into Uganda are mostly part of the Hema tribe and are made up of mostly children, women and the elderly.

Ms Bushra Malik Jofar, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner in Kampala says that the refugee agency is not in a position to extend assistance to the Congolese until they enter designated refugee areas within the country.

"We are not in a position to give international protection until they register in refugee settlements in western and north western Uganda. We have made this clear to them and to Ugandan authorities,'' she said by telephone Thursday. dpa hw bg sc

AP-NY-05-01-03 0935EDT

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Received by NewsEdge Insight: 05/01/2003 09:36:08