Civilians pay heavy price of worsening conflict in east DRC: UN

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned of a growing humanitarian catastrophe in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where fighting between government forces and armed groups has caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh said on Friday the violence had prompted nearly 300,000 people to flee across the Rutshuru and Masisi territories of the DRC’s North Kivu province in February.

“Civilians continue to pay the heavy and bloody price of conflict, including women and children who barely escaped the violence and are now sleeping out in the open air in spontaneous or organised sites, exhausted and traumatised,” he told reporters in Geneva.

Expressing “great alarm”, Saltmarsh said the UNHCR and its partners were stepping up humanitarian assistance but that difficulties remain in accessing displaced people in some parts of North Kivu because of the violence.

In mid-January, the UN aid agency OCHA said 12 humanitarian organisations had been forced to limit their operations in parts of Ituri province because of increased attacks.

Scores of armed groups roam the vast mineral-rich eastern DRC, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that flared at the end of the 20th century.

In 2021, the government declared a state of siege in North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri, placing them under military rule in an attempt to address the security crisis – but the violence has persisted.

On Thursday, an overnight attack on the village of Mukondi, 30km (19 miles) south of the city of Beni in North Kivu province, killed at least 36 people. A local official and the head of a civil society group said the assailants were believed to be members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – a Ugandan armed group based in eastern DRC that has pledged allegiance to ISIL (ISIS) and wages frequent deadly raids on villages.

Separately, sources quoted by AFP news agency said clashes between the M23 armed group and government forces erupted again on Friday near Goma, the capital of North Kivu.

The early morning fighting took place near the village of Murambi, fewer than 30km (18 miles) west of Goma, local officials said.