Hundreds flee as Congo Tutsi rebels hunt Hutu foes

By Hereward Holland

RUTSHURU, Congo (Reuters) - Hundreds of Congolese civilians fled east into neighboring Uganda on Wednesday to escape reported attacks on villages by Tutsi rebels who said they were hunting their Rwandan Hutu militia enemies.

A U.N. refugee official in Uganda said families were streaming across the border at Ishasha from Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province, where a Tutsi rebel spokesman said rebel forces had launched "policing" operations.

The rebel activities and related refugee exodus signaled recurring violence and unrest in North Kivu despite a week-long relative lull in combat between rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and the Congolese army.

A U.N. envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, was preparing to begin another peace mission to try to prevent the North Kivu conflict from escalating into a repeat of the wider 1998-2003 war that devastated Congo.

Fighting in North Kivu since late August has driven a quarter of a million people from their homes, creating what aid workers say is a humanitarian catastrophe.

Roberta Russo, spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR in the Ugandan capital Kampala, told Reuters that 1,300 Congolese refugees had crossed through Ishasha on the Congo/Uganda border since Tuesday afternoon.

"My colleagues at the border say there is just a stream of people coming," she said.

Some of the newcomers, joining more than 13,000 Congolese who had already fled into Uganda since August, reported their villages between Rutshuru and Ishasha had been attacked two days ago by Nkunda's fighters, she said.

"We have some people who said their villages were directly attacked, and family members killed, by what they said were Nkunda rebels," Russo said.

Rebel-held Rutshuru was calm on Wednesday and U.N. agencies distributed aid supplies to civilians there.

A spokesman for Nkunda, Bertrand Bisimwe, said rebel forces had since Saturday launched operations north of Rutshuru against locations occupied by Rwandan Hutu fighters of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

Nkunda's Tutsi fighters are sworn enemies of the FDLR, which includes perpetrators of Rwanda's 1994 genocide in which Hutu soldiers and militia slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

"We've launched policing operations to force them (the FDLR) to withdraw. They are fleeing, but they're taking the population hostage, using them as shields," Bisimwe told Reuters.

"SMALL SKIRMISHES"

He said the rebel actions involved no clashes with Congo's government army and did not affect a ceasefire declared by Nkunda. "This has got nothing to do with the ceasefire."