Congo violence eases with cease-fire

Reporting from Goma, Congo — An uneasy calm returned Thursday to this battered Congolese city as a tenuous cease-fire halted clashes and nervous residents struggled to resume their regular lives.

Many of the thousands of panicked people who fled regional displacement camps a day earlier and stormed into Goma, a city in northeastern Congo, began traveling back to the nearby camps.

In contrast to Wednesday's frightened stampede, when people feared rebels were in hot pursuit, the return trip was a somber procession, with weary people of all ages carrying mattresses, blankets and wood kindling toward an uncertain future.

Rather than food and security in the city, they found only more suffering. Congolese soldiers, who are notoriously ill-trained and underpaid, spent much of the night terrorizing the city, looting shops, firing weapons, raping women and harassing displaced families.

At least 10 people were shot to death and another seven were wounded, United Nations officials said.

"We found no help in the city and had to sleep outside on the ground," said Ntibarikure Nzabandora, 22, a father of two who was leading his family back to a displacement camp on the outskirts of Goma. "We might as well go back. At least maybe we will find some food."

A doctor at a Goma hospital said several of the dozen gunshot victims he had treated Thursday waited several hours before getting medical attention because they feared venturing out into the streets, where gunfire rang out until past 2 a.m.

U.N. peacekeeping soldiers cannot promise to protect civilians in the region, said Kevin Kennedy, a New York-based spokesman for the U.N. operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which includes a 17,000-member peacekeeping force, the largest U.N. deployment in the world.

Kennedy said the U.N. was transferring peacekeepers to the area from other parts of the country, but that the 850 troops now patrolling Goma were no match for the chaos experienced in the region this week, including Congolese soldiers "running amok."

Soldiers knocked at the door of Jacques Kalisa in the middle of the night.

"Soldiers said they just wanted some food and rest, but once inside they changed their story and said they needed money," said the Goma resident. When told the family had no money, Kalisa said, soldiers killed his brother and shot two other family members.