Aid group attacked in east Congo

[jpstr00]

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Gunmen attacked a French aid agency in volatile eastern Congo, forcing the charity to suspend operations in the region and evacuate five foreign staff, a spokesman for the aid group said Thursday.

In another sign of lawlessness, three Congolese human rights workers investigating alleged atrocities committed by armed groups fled the eastern city of Goma after renegade soldiers threatened to kill them, said George Ngwa, spokesman for Amnesty International.

The attack on French-run Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, occurred Tuesday at Kabati, 140 kilometers (90 miles) north of Goma, said Jean-Christophe Dolle, the charity's director in Goma.

Unidentified armed men in uniform looted money, logistical material and a car, but no one was injured, Dolle said.

The French-run charity immediately suspended most of its projects in the region, an area along the Ugandan and Rwandan borders that includes Masisi and Rutshuru.

Dolle said 160 Congolese staff were remaining to "tend to lifesaving procedures only."

Speaking by telephone from Amnesty's London headquarters, Ngwa said the threats against the three rights workers were made over the last several weeks via visits and telephone calls after several Congolese rights groups released a collective report detailing arms distributions by unidentified groups to civilians in Goma and the province that surrounds it, North Kivu.

Ngwa said the renegade soldiers belonged to the former rebel group, the Rally for Congolese Democracy, or RDC.

The ex-rebel group was officially integrated into the national army in 2003, but some members still act independently of the government as warlords, terrorizing and taxing the population at will, Amnesty said in a report released Wednesday.

Some soldiers visited the rights workers at their homes, threatening them or asking neighbors of their whereabouts.

One worker with the Goma-based Center for Research on Environment, Democracy and Human Rights, received several threatening calls, and was told, "We have a program to kill you."

"The intimidation is coming from the very ranks of the transitional government," Ngwa said. "The government knows who these people are and should put an immediate stop to it."

Amnesty was trying to locate the three rights workers, who may have fled to forests around Goma or to neighboring Uganda, Ngwa said.

Last month, former members of the RCD fought with loyalist troops near Goma, emptying entire villages and sending 150,000 people fleeing.

The U.N. mission in Congo set up a 10-kilometer (six-mile) buffer zone between warring sides in order to treat the displaced. The fighting eased, but renegade soldiers still make their way into the zone to pillage and intimidate.

Eastern Congo remains lawless and unstable despite the end of Congo's 1998-2002 war.