Nairobi-Goma - The UN refugee agency UNHCR said Friday it was beginning to move Congolese refugees from camps near the front line in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo as civilians continued to flee fresh fighting. UNHCR is moving people on a voluntary basis from the Kibati camp near Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, to a new camp at Mugunga, 15 kilometres to the south-west.
Around 60,000 people are believed to be sheltering at Kibati. It is not clear how many refugees will choose to go, but those that do will have to walk to their new home.
Fighting between troops loyal to rebel general Laurent Nkunda and government forces exploded into full-scale conflict in October when the rebels came on the verge of taking Goma.
Well over 250,000 civilians have been displaced since August as a result of the clashes, aid agencies say.
Nkunda called a ceasefire and pulled his troops back from the front lines in mid-November after meeting UN special envoy and former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo.
Obasanjo is in the DR Congo again this weekend and is expected to meet most of the groups involved in the battles.
Despite the ceasefire, clashes have been reported between Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and the pro-government Mai Mai militia over the last few days.
Nkunda's men have now taken the border town of Ishasha, about 120 kilometres from Goma, forcing at least 13,000 civilians to flee into Uganda.
Most of the new refugees arrived in Uganda on Thursday. They told UNHCR the rebels had killed women and children indiscriminately.
"The rebels attacked my village. They killed all the women, even pregnant women," said 20-year-old Jean, who walked for three days to Uganda.
The UN has said that civilians caught in between the warring forces have suffered at the hands of all parties.
"All belligerents have committed serious atrocities against civilians, and these include widespread looting," Alan Doss, the secretary-general's special representative to the DR Congo, said in a report to the UN Security Council.
"Women and children have suffered most from the recurrent fighting," he said. "Sexual violence is rampant, and many armed groups continue to recruit children into their ranks."
The UN has agreed to send another 3,000 troops to bolster the 17,000-strong peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, known as MONUC. The peacekeepers are hopelessly overstretched by the conflict.
However, former UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland told the BBC that the troop surge was too little and said the lack of commitment to resolving the crisis was due to discrimination against Africa.
Nkunda has warned he will march on the capital Kinshasa if the government does not address his grievances.
The rebel general says he is fighting to protect Tutsis from Hutu militias who fled to the DR Congo after Tutsi forces seized power in Rwanda.
The armed Hutu groups were implicated in the 1994 massacres in Rwanda, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
However, the DR Congo government has so far refused to talk to Nkunda and accused Rwanda of backing him.
There are fears that the conflict could draw in other countries and reignite the 1998-2003 war, which UN agencies say caused the deaths of over 5 million people in the DR Congo.
