UN reports 160,000 refugees in camps around Goma in eastern DR Congo

Up to 160,000 refugees are sheltering in camps around the town of Goma, capital of the eastern province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), according to UN sources. The head of public relations at the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Sylvestre Ntumba Mudingayi, on Wednesday also reported the recent fighting between the DR Congo Armed Forces (FARDC) and the M23 rebels had resulted in the displacements of 420 households involving 2,000 or so people. Most the displaced by the recent fighting arrived in Goma and are taking shelter in churches and schools, Mudingayi told the weekly press conference by the UN Mission for Stabilization of Congo (MONUSCO) in the capital Kinshasa. The humanitarian workers are currently assessing other sites and camps far away from the battle zone, where the displaced persons can be relocated, he added. "The recurrence of fighting near the inhabited zones poses serious problems for the protection of thousands of people and risks causing serious humanitarian consequences," the coordinator of humanitarian action in DR Congo, Moustapha Soumare, said earlier in the week. Meanwhile, OCHA reported that about 66,000 Congolese refugees fled to Uganda since the fighting broke out between the FARDC and an armed group in the town of Beni in North Kivu province.