Three people were reportedly killed at the weekend during a scramble for food aid at a displaced persons’ camp in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
According to aid agencies, the DRC’s 5.9 million-strong population of internally displaced people is the largest on the African continent. It includes about 700,000 who became displaced this year.
The country also hosts over half a million refugees and asylum-seekers, mainly from Burundi, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
Many people in the Kanyarucyinya camp, which houses about 17,500 near the city of Goma, have fled fighting between the army and the M23 militia, which has captured swathes of new territory in recent weeks and displaced tens of thousands of people.
It was gathered that local officials brought food to the camp on Friday but decided not to immediately distribute the aid.
The decision angered some of the displaced people, provoking scuffles in which three people were killed.
Meanwhile, DRC Foreign Minister Christophe Lutundula and his Rwandan counterpart Vincent Biruta met in neighbouring Angola for a fresh round of talks aimed at calming the tensions in the region.
Kinshasa has accused Rwanda of supporting the M23 group, a claim which Kigali denied.
A joint statement released on Saturday night said that the talks would “maintain the political dialogue between the authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Rwanda as a means of resolving the political crisis between the two brotherly countries.”
