"Tens of thousands of civilians flee in Congo; Envoy: Soldiers opened fire" by Michelle Faul, Associated Press | October 29, 2008
KILIMANYOKA, Congo - Rebels vowing to take Congo's eastern provincial capital advanced toward Goma yesterday, sending tens of thousands fleeing.
The top UN envoy said government soldiers had fired on civilians and foreign aid workers trying to escape the region. Alan Doss, the top UN envoy in Congo, said peacekeepers were forced to "respond" after government soldiers fired on civilians and trapped foreign aid workers trying to leave Rutshuru, a strategic town north of Goma. He vowed to keep Rutshuru and other towns out of rebel hands.
"We are going to remain there, and we are going to act against any effort to take over a city or major population center by force," he told reporters in New York in a videoconference. Aid agencies said their workers could hear bombs exploding as the rebels closed in and angry and frightened civilians and soldiers blocked their evacuation by UN peacekeepers.
The mob was looting humanitarian centers and the belongings of about 50 trapped aid workers in Rutshuru, said Ivo Brandau, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. Brandau said tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing that town, heading north and east toward the Ugandan border. Rutshuru had a population of about 30,000 residents and the same number of refugees.
Also see: The Boston Globe Reads the MSM Lie Monitor
Doctors Without Borders said its doctors and nurses trapped at Rutshuru Hospital had treated 70 war wounded since Sunday but most patients had fled the hospital. Meanwhile, a sudden influx of an estimated 30,000 people tripled the size of a camp in Kibati in a matter of hours, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN refugee agency.
"It's chaos up there," Redmond told the Associated Press from Geneva, citing UN staff in Congo. "These crowds of people coming down from the north have already started turning up there."
The unrest in eastern Congo has been fueled by festering hatreds left over from the Rwandan genocide and the country's unrelenting civil wars.
Yeah, about Rwanda: France's Mass-Murdering Holocaust Deniers
Renegade General Laurent Nkunda has threatened to take Goma despite calls from the UN Security Council for him to respect a cease-fire brokered by the UN in January. --more--"
The fact that the U.N. is sponsoring the government (and the MSM paper waiting to mention the rebels until now) leads me to believe they are NOT ALLIES of USrael, that's for sure.
I guess that's why THEIR "MASSACRES" are making the papers, 'eh?
