Please call ARC Headquarters at 612.872.7060 and ask how you can help to provide emergency funding to meet the crisis.
GOMA, Congo — The exodus has begun.
Women with babies on their backs. Families crammed into cars with coolers and suitcases stuffed to the windows. United Nations trucks. Aid workers. Businessmen. Panicky government troops literally running for their lives.
On Wednesday afternoon, countless people of all kinds poured out of Goma, a strategic Congolese city on the border of Rwanda, fleeing the advancing rebel forces massing on the outskirts of town.
--Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, October 29, 2008
A wave of humanity surged along under the hot sun - women with mattresses and pots on their backs, men shepherding cows and goats, children looking vulnerable, babies crying.
"We haven't eaten in two days," one family shouted out as our vehicle passed by on the road leading into the lakeside city of Goma.
For the last few nights, they had been camped about 15km (9 miles) north of Goma on either side of the main road.
They had fled fierce battles around Kibumba, 30km away (18 miles) - home to a huge camp for those displaced by the violence that has wreaked havoc in this region over the last year.
The trek took its toll on some - one woman had collapsed from exhaustion, people crowded round her trying to tend to her baby.
As darkness fell, it was not clear where the displaced people would sleep.
--Thomas Fessy, BBC News, October 29, 2008
Escalating violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is creating a humanitarian catastrophe and could have tragic consequences for the entire region, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday.
In a statement read by U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe, Ban said "the intensification and expansion of the conflict is creating a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic dimensions and threatens dire consequences on a regional scale."
--Reuters, October 30, 2008
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