The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) said on Wednesday it would retain its troops in the eastern town of Bukavu and its surrounding areas so as to provide assistance to civilians in conjunction with the South Kivu provincial authorities and the transitional government in Kinshasa, the nations capital.
The announcement was made in a statement issued the same day as loyal government troops re-entered Bukavu, following the withdrawal on Tuesday of dissident forces under the command of Gen Laurent Nkunda and Col Jules Mutebutsi.
MONUC said the return to Bukavu of loyalist troops, under the command of Gen Mbuza Mabe, was likely to facilitate the restoration of order and the rule of law and enable the governor and vice-governors, recently appointed by the transitional government, to assume their duties immediately.
Mabe commands the 10th Military Region under which Bukavu, capital of South Kivu, falls. Thousands of Bukavu residents thronged the streets to welcome the loyalist troops. The dissidents had seized Bukavu on 26 May after they received reports, which Nkunda later acknowledged were exaggerated, that Mabe was killing Congolese Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge.
The fighting forced some humanitarian organisations to evacuate their staff from Bukavu. The country director of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Werner Vansant, told IRIN on Wednesday that his expatriate staff had been evacuated to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, and would not return to Bukavu immediately. He said local IRC staff members were providing water and sanitation services to some 1,200 residents who had been moved from their shelter in the MONUCs compound to Alfajiri College.
Malteser Germany, the relief organisations of the Catholic Order of Malta in Germany, reported on Tuesday it had suspended some of its programmes in South Kivu but that local staff would continue to provide medical care to 700 Bukavu families who were victims of sexual violence.
In Bukavu, Malteser supports 88 health centres and 28 nutrition centres, providing for about 840,000 people in the region.
In the nations capital, Kinshasa, the spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC, Hamadoun Toure, said the UN World Food Programmes warehouse in Bukavu had been looted during the fighting and, as a result, there was no more food for the population, which is in urgent need.
Kilde: IRIN News, FN.
