Aid agencies scrambled today to help many thousands of people displaced by fighting in east Congo but many were stranded despite an appeal by African leaders for a ceasefire.
Toning down his warlike rhetoric, rebel chief Laurent Nkunda welcomed a call by an emergency summit for a ceasefire and humanitarian corridor in North Kivu province, but aid workers were cautious.
"We urgently need to get into these places and deliver assistance," the UN World Food Programme's Marcus Prior said.
An off-duty Senegalese peacekeeper was shot dead in the city of Goma late yesterday by a gunman believed to be a Congolese Army soldier, according to UN officials.
Fighting between Tutsi rebels and pro-government forces went on despite a unilateral ceasefire Nkunda declared last week, a few days into an offensive against provincial capital Goma that sent civilians fleeing for their lives.
Sporadic bursts of gunfire were heard early today near Kibati, 12 km north of Goma, where more serious fighting between Nkunda's rebels and Congo's army halted food distribution and vaccinations by UN agencies yesterday.
Nkunda's revolt against Congo's government, whom he says side with local militias and Rwandan Hutu rebels against his minority Tutsi community, has displaced over 1 million in North Kivu in two years, an estimated 250,000 since September alone.
The world's biggest UN peacekeeping force, 17,000-strong, has been unable to stem the latest bout of bloodletting to rock Congo since a 1998-2003 regional war driven in part by competition for its huge mineral resources.
Over 5 million people have died in a decade of conflict.
African leaders and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met in Nairobi yesterday to tackle the conflict, rooted in Rwanda's 1994 genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
"They were talking about a ceasefire and humanitarian corridor. We were asking for that already," Nkunda said today by phone from his base in the hills north of Goma.
Nkunda's comments were generally more conciliatory than most of his other public statements during the two-week offensive.
But he warned regional peacemaking forces, which yesterday's summit agreed may be sent into North Kivu, to stick to humanitarian operations or they would be treated as the enemy.
"If they come to really support the corridor, I have no problem. If they come for political reasons, it is not for peace. We will treat them like (the UN force). They will be on the side of the government," Nkunda said.
Civilians displaced by the conflict tried on Saturday to get back to what passes for normality in a refugee camp at Kibati, which thousands fled yesterday during gunbattles between rebels and Congolese troops in nearby Kibati village.
Reuters