Thousands of women assaulted; new fighting in eastern DR of Congo, UN says

Thousands of women and girls between the ages of 5 and 80 in the eastern area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been tortured and raped and many are nursing bullet wounds, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today.

At a briefing in Geneva, WFP spokesperson Christiane Berthiaume said the agency believed that these incidents were just the tip of the iceberg.

On a web site erected by the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the occurrence of rape in conflict is shown to take place in every current war, but the DRC is singled out.

"In many war situations, violence against women has reached incomprehensible levels of brutality and cruelty. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of women are thought to have been raped since 1998, sexual mutilation and even cannibalism were reported in 2003, with armed groups particularly targeting Pygmy women for cannibalism and genocide," according to a UNIFEM fact sheet.

UNIFEM said impunity for war crimes that target women because of their gender must end and wartime rapists must be tried and punished.

Between 2,000 and 4,000 Congolese were on the run in the eastern region, meanwhile, after fighting broke out on Friday between a Congolese Mayi-Mayi militia and a Rwandan rebel group in South Kivu province, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

"Humanitarian agencies are reportedly overwhelmed by the sudden influx and concerted efforts are underway to respond to IDP (internally displaced persons) needs," OCHA said in a news release.

The new displacement was occurring shortly after a joint team, drawn from UN humanitarian agencies, had visited South Kivu on an assessment mission, OCHA said.

In a regional population of about 375,000, IDPs numbered 76,500, while 49,500 other people had just returned from five to seven years in exile, OCHA said.

Providing food was a problem. "Although the region is very fertile, many people refuse to resume cultivation of their fields, the systematic pillage of crops having become a common practice among armed groups," the Office said. "Malnutrition was clearly visible among populations the mission could visit."

The mission recommended urgent distribution of seeds and tools, but in conjunction with food aid to prevent recipients from eating the seeds. Roads would have to be repaired to allow the transportation of harvests from fields to markets, OCHA said.