5 September 1997 - ICRC News 34: Brazzaville/Kinshasa: Relief work progressing

The conflict currently ravaging Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of the Congo, has been scattering its victims to both sides of the Congo river. ICRC delegates leave Kinshasa daily to cross the Congo river on barges to Brazzaville. The Congolese capital has been split in two by a line along which artillery duels have been intensifying. The delegates have been working without let-up on both sides of the line, so far concentrating on providing drinking water and medicines to those displaced by the fighting. Across the river in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, large numbers of refugees have been arriving in dug-out canoes.

Delegates have been working since June to bring food to victims taken to a medical facility north of Brazzaville as well as to those caring for them there, who are unable to provide for themselves. When fighting resumed on 15 July, over 150 patients had to be evacuated to Kinshasa in order to receive adequate care.

The ICRC’s Central Tracing Agency has succeeded in reuniting 13 children, separated by the fighting from their families, with relatives in places affording a measure of safety on the outskirts of Brazzaville and in a refugee camp in Kinshasa. A further 26 unaccompanied children have been registered by the ICRC but their families have not as yet been located. Elsewhere, the 60 youngsters evacuated in June from a children’s home situated on the front line were subsequently taken to safety south of the city and are doing well in their new home safely removed from the fighting.