CLUTCHING a small pack of high-energy biscuits, Clementine Riziki slowly chews her first meal in more than a week.
Nine days ago, she fled her village in Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu province when attacking Tutsi rebels burned down her house and stole her belongings.
Heavily pregnant, she walked for six hours to the makeshift Kibati camp
for tens of thousands of internally displaced people where, among the chaos, debris and noise, she gave birth this week to twins.
Breastfeeding Olive and Olivier a few miles down the hill from the rebel front line, Ms Riziki said: "I fled with nothing. This is the first time I've eaten in nine days." The twins were born amid a humanitarian emergency in a region that Unicef, the United Nations children's agency, calls "the worst place in the world to be a child".
Amid volcanic dust and rubble, thousands of families huddle under blankets and umbrellas.
Ms Riziki's plight is typical of that of an estimated 200,000 hungry, frightened civilians crammed into camps around the North Kivu provincial capital, Goma, after fleeing a Tutsi rebel offensive last week and militia and army killings. Tens of thousands more are feared to be roaming the hills, desperately seeking shelter, food and water.
The UN and foreign aid groups are scrambling to cope with an emergency described as "catastrophic" by relief workers in a country where more than five million people have died in a decade from conflict, hunger and disease.
Like others displaced by the fighting, Ms Riziki faced a difficult choice: to wait in Kibati for the aid agencies to deliver long-overdue food, or risk crossing the front line in the hope of salvaging something from the remains of her home.
But fresh fighting on Tuesday and yesterday, which the UN said involved Tutsi rebels and the pro-government Mai-Mai militia, disrupted aid operations around Rutshuru, north of Goma.
North Kivu's long-suffering civilians have been clamouring for more protection, not just from the Tutsi rebels loyal to the rebel General Laurent Nkunda, but also from marauding army soldiers and Mai-Mai militia who have killed, looted and raped.
A second day of confused clashes at Kiwanja near Rutshuru, captured last week by Tutsi fighters loyal to Gen Nkunda, raised fears of a return to wider fighting in the violent eastern region bordering Rwanda. Civilians streamed along a road from Kiwanja towards Rutshuru to escape what they said were attacks by Mai-Mai militiamen who support Congo's army.
A rebel spokesman accused Congolese government forces of breaking the ceasefire at Kiwanja, 45 miles north of Goma.
Gen Nkunda said he was upholding the ceasefire.
A regional summit is expected to take place tomorrow in Nairobi, Kenya, attended by Joseph Kabila, the DRC president; Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda; and Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general. Mr Kagame is believed to wield strong influence over Gen Nkunda's Tutsi-led rebels.
The full article contains 503 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
