More than 800 children have lost contact with their families in the wake of fierce fighting between government troops and rebels in the eastern #DemocraticRepublicofCongo, a Red Cross official says.https://t.co/Ur9RAjFLgo
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) June 25, 2022
More than 800 children have lost contact with their families in the wake of fierce fighting between government troops and rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
, a Red Thingy official said Saturday.
The renewed violence over the past few months has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in the Rutshuru area of DR Congo near the border with Uganda.
"Our Red Thingy teams in Uganda and DRC tell us that 800 children have been separated from their families as a result of the upsurge in violence in Rutshuru territory," Uganda’s Red Thingy communications officer Irene Nakasiita told AFP.
Clashes have intensified in recent months after the M23 rebel militia
| ... also known as the Congolese Revolutionary Army, the primarily Tutsi group was founded in 2012 as a sock puppet of Rwanda, which no doubt seemed a good idea at the time. But in less than a year the Congolese army defeated them, and Rwanda publicly stepped back in response to international pressure. Recently M23 has started acting up again, possibly again at Rwandan instigation... |
Nakasiita said 716 unaccompanied children from Congo had so far been registered in Uganda alone, while 155 had been reunited with their families.
"Unfortunately, the security situation in the region makes searching for missing people and reuniting them with their families difficult," the International Committee of the Red Thingy said in a statement.
"Access to areas where there are displaced people originally come from is risky and family members constantly on the move," it added.
The United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday that 13 civilians including four children had been killed in fighting in the Rutshuru district between June 19 and 21.
"Several villages in Rutshuru territory have been practically emptied of their inhabitants, some of whom have fled to Uganda," it said.
At least 158,000 people have been forced from their homes since March in Rutshuru and the neighboring Nyiragongo area because of the conflict, the UN says.