An estimated 1.7 million people have died as a direct or indirect result of fighting in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the past 22 months, the US-based International Rescue Committee has reported.
Calculations are based on mortality surveys conducted in the region which showed that more than 2.3 million people died in five eastern provinces of the country between August 1998 and May this year.
According to mortality rates calculated by the US Centres for Disease Control, 600,000 people would have been expected to die in that area over the same period, leading to the conclusion that war in the region directly or indirectly caused 1.7 million additional deaths.
Of that number, 200,000 deaths were attributable to acts of violence, while the vast majority were due to the war-related collapse of the region's health infrastructure. "On average, some 2,600 people are dying every day in this war and our research found that the first months of the year 2000 were even worse than 1999," the study's author, Mr Les Roberts, an epidemiologist, said.
About 100 civilians have been killed and 700 wounded in this week's fighting between Rwandan and Ugandan troops in the Congolese city of Kisangani, medical aid workers said yesterday. The bodies of some civilians lay in the streets of the jungle city yesterday and people were unable to collect them for burial, as both armies continued to ignore the UN-brokered ceasefire.