Thousands of refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo have fled to neighboring Uganda to escape renewed violence in eastern Congo, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says.
UNHCR spokeswoman Lucy Beck said on Friday that over 4,000 refugees crossed into Uganda on Thursday night to escape clashes between armed factions of the March 23 movement (M23), one of them led by a renegade general wanted on war-crimes charges.
She added that the agency is bracing itself for a greater influx in coming weeks.
The fighting broke out on Thursday after M23 military chief Sultani Makenga sacked the group's political leader, Jean-Marie Runiga, for his alleged links with renegade Bosco Ntaganda, prompting fighters to turn their weapons on each other.
Ntaganda, known by the nom de guerre "Terminator" due to his brutal methods, has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2006 on charges of committing the war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under the age of fifteen and using them to participate actively in hostilities.
The refugees are “currently camped in a temporary refugee camp. Most (of them) think the fighting won't last long, but of course if the instability continues we can take these people to permanent resettlement areas," said Moses Watasa, the spokesman for the Ugandan prime minister's office.
The M23 rebels defected from the Congolese army in April 2012 in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.
Since early May 2012, nearly 3 million people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. About 2.5 million have resettled in Congo, but more than 460,000 have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.
Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on since 1998 and left over 5.5 million people dead.
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