DRC: Devastating attacks against civilians continue in eastern province

Democratic Republic of Congo | 20 January 2009

More than three weeks after attacks on the towns of Faradje and Doruma in Haut-Uélé, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) combatants are continuing their devastating assaults against civilians. Attacks are taking place closer and closer to the town of Dungu, in the eastern part of DRC. The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team working in Dungu is very worried.

The MSF team has been flying on a small plane to several of the towns attacked in order to provide assistance to the population. But the assaults continue to get closer to Dungu, which was last attacked on Nov. 1.

A couple of days before an attack on the town of Tora on Jan. 17, the towns of Sambia, Subani, Akwa and Tomati were assaulted one after the other.

The MSF team is now witnessing the arrival of the first refugees from the affected areas. They first walked to Ndedu, a small town 30 kilometres south of Dungu, where they joined displaced people from Dungu, Duru and Bangadi who fled attacks back in October.

Ten thousands of people are reportedly walking on dust roads south of Garamba Park to get to Dungu in search of shelter. “It is increasingly difficult for the team to assess the need of the displaced populations, set up mobile clinics and if needed, to refer wounded people to Dungu hospital,” explains Charles Gaudry, field coordinator for the MSF project, while talking of the worsening security conditions.

The insecurity is one of the major constraints to providing medical and humanitarian support. Even travelling by plane is difficult, as no one knows what is happening in the small towns where the teams are supposed to land. Indeed, the LRA’s movements are unpredictable. MSF teams cannot stay in one spot longer than a couple of hours, just enough time to assess the patients’ situation in health structures, evacuate the most seriously wounded and supply drugs and medical equipment to the often looted clinics.

As one of the few organizations working in the area, MSF believes it is extremely hard to know what is happening in this region where the attacks are multiplying. Knowing how many people have been displaced or even killed in this vast territory where villages and small towns are scattered is impossible.

However the numbers of victims are getting more precise since a Human Rights Watch team investigated the December events and confirmed the killing of more than 600 men, women and children as well as the kidnapping of 500 young people.

Since visiting Faradje and Doruma immediately after the attacks in order to provide emergency care, the MSF team observed that the combatants leave few wounded. “They obviously come to kill,” Dr. Matthieu Bichet, who went to Faradje, Doruma and Bangadi, recently told us. “The couple of wounded people we nursed were clearly left for dead. That is what saved them.”

For MSF, the humanitarian situation of the population here is an emergency. “MSF is reinforcing its teams in order to be more reactive just after the attacks,” says Marc Poncin, an MSF program manager for DRC. “But we also have to acknowledge that in such situations, it is very difficult to intervene for those populations whose need of support, security and protection is so important. Today, even the security of our medical staff, national or expatriate, is not insured. So imagine what it means for the population.”