voa标准英语2008年-Aid Agencies Say Congo Fighting Has Split Famil

Humanitarian 1 organizations, including Save the Children and Oxfam, say more than half the civilians 2 displaced by recent fighting in eastern Congo may have lost contact with family members.

Save the Children emergency officer George Graham spoke 3 to VOA from Goma, the capital of North Kivu province in Eastern DRC.

"The survey was conducted by four British aid agencies who went into the camps around Goma. We interviewed almost 300 people and found that of those people, two thirds had lost a family member, whether that be a parent or a husband or a wife, or indeed a child," said Graham. "About a quarter of the people we surveyed had lost children."

With its limited sample size, the survey does not provide conclusive 4 figures, but the organization says it provides an indication of the scale of the problem.

"The villages have been attacked completely by surprise. Families have found themselves in the middle of the night having to gather their possessions, gather all their family members together and flee to safety," he added. "And in the chaos 5 of this situation, we are finding numerous reports of families ending up separated."

The aid agency CARE has also said that up to one-fifth of displaced families around Goma are headed by single mothers.

Sporadic 6 fighting has plagued eastern Congo since the official end of the country's civil war in 2003, but the violence has intensified 7 since late August. The heaviest clashes have pitted the rebel National Congress for Defense 8 of the People, led by Laurent Nkunda, against government forces. But several other armed groups have been involved in attacks.

The U.N. Security Council last week approved the deployment 9 of an additional 3,000 troops for the peacekeeping mission in the Congo, known by the French acronym 10, MONUC. With 17,000 troops it is the world's largest peacekeeping mission, but its forces are spread across a large area and have had difficulty preventing clashes.

Government troops stopped a U.N. convoy 11 Sunday near the Kibati refugee camp outside Goma and removed 23 people being transported by the United Nations. The men were taken despite the apparent objection of the peacekeepers. U.N. officials say they included members of the Mai Mai militia 12, who have traditionally been allied 13 with the government, but government soldiers accused the men of being rebels.

After the incident, civilians threw stones at the U.N. convoy, the latest manifestation 14 of local frustration 15 with the operation. But for the most part, a tentative ceasefire has been holding in the region.

Last week, Nkunda's forces pulled back from front lines near the town of Kanyabayonga, north of Goma. MONUC military spokesman Jean-Paul Dietrich says that so far the peacekeepers have encountered few problems.

"The situation has been calm for about a week in this region. There was some attempt of incursion on Thursday, when a group of about 70 Mai Mai tried to enter Rwindi, which was left by CNDP on Tuesday evening," said Dietrich. "But we finally convinced them not to continue towards Kiwanja, I think this was their plan, and they returned from where they came."

Nkunda says he is protecting the region's ethnic 16 Tutsi community from Rwandan Hutu militia operating in the area, and has demanded direct negotiations 17 with the Congolese government. The government maintains negotiations must involve all of the numerous armed groups operating in the country's east.