DAKAR (AlertNet) - The United Nations' World Food Programme next week will start distributing food aid to more than 50,000 people driven out of their homes by ethnic violence in northwestern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The fighting - unrelated to simmering rebel violence in the mineral-rich east - erupted at the end of last month in the village of Dongo in Equateur province. It has forced more than 38,000 people to flee across the border into neighbouring Congo Republic and displaced 14,000 others internally, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement.
U.N. assessment teams on both sides of the border have stressed the need for food aid, especially for women and children.
"This is another serious humanitarian situation in Congo which must be tackled,Â? Stephanie Savariaud, a WFP spokeswoman in Kinshasa told AlertNet.
WFP plans to start handing out food to the refugees in the east of Congo Republic next week, with another distribution scheduled for the second week of December in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Equateur province. The sporadic violence in the province, caused by a feud over fishing rights, has killed more than 100 people since the end of October.
Â?It is important to do the distribution at the same time on both sides of the border in order not to create further displacements, with people crossing the border to Congo Republic because theyÂ?ve heard that there is a food distribution going on,Â? Savariaud said.
However, over the weekend WFP provided emergency food aid to 187 vulnerable families in eastern Congo Republic. The refugees are living in Â?disturbingÂ? conditions and need shelter and better sanitation, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency in Kinshasha said.
The fighting led to the looting of the agency's and its partner organisations' offices in the small town of Buburu in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday, the spokesman added, declining to provide further details.
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