DR Congo potential massacre warning
national |
miscellaneous |
news report 
Friday October 25, 2002 01:18
by redJaDe
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DR Congo massacre warning
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2358509.stm
The Democratic Republic of Congo faces a potential massacre of horrific proportions unless the international community forestalls it, a senior United Nations official has warned.
The UN's Deputy Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Carolyn McAskie, told journalists at the end of a trip to eastern DR Congo that ethnic hatred was being deliberately stirred up.
She said that when foreign troops left the Congo the hold of the main rebel group in the east of the country - the RCD - had weakened.
As a result, Ms McAskie said, Rwanda and Burundi had each sent a battalion of troops back in the Congo at the weekend to bolster the RCD.
Aid agencies estimate that more than two million people have already died, mostly from starvation and hunger, during the four-year war which pulled in troops from several countries in the region.
Violence has flared again in recent weeks as militia groups have taken advantage of a vacuum left by the withdrawal of thousands of foreign troops.