Split up by war in Congo

KIBATI, Congo - Rebecca Nyiringindi scanned the sprawling refugee camp in eastern Congo, searching for just one person among the thousands of hungry and homeless.

"My mother's name is Alphonsine," the 10-year-old said softly, sucking her thumb. "She's short. She's very dark."

Rebecca was among more than 150 children searching for their parents yesterday in a camp in Kibati, just miles from where soldiers and Tutsi rebels guarded a tense front line, raising fears that fighting would resume in this mineral-rich region.

About 70,000 refugees have fled to Kibati since fighting intensified in eastern Congo in August, displacing at least 250,000 people despite the presence of the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world.

Aid agencies took advantage of a lull in fighting this week to return to camps near the front line and resume registering children who were separated from their parents during the conflict in Congo's North Kivu province.

Some were clearly traumatized. Zawadi Bunzigiye, 6, stared down at her grubby blue dress and said, in a voice barely above a whisper, "I'm afraid of bullets."

Many children fled with only the clothes on their backs. When fighting erupted Oct. 27 in the rebel-controlled town of Kibumba, about 12 miles from the camp, Rebecca said she fled on foot, accompanied only by the family's goat.

"But I lost it," she said. "It was a chocolate-colored goat. It was a big goat."

She said her parents sent her to the camp, believing she would be safer there.

"The military came in," she said. "I was afraid. I hid next to the radio tower. My parents said, 'Go, we'll come after you.' I went along the road and I didn't see them again."

There are no schools in the camp, and young children run underfoot all day, dodging waves of new arrivals. At night, residents say in fearful whispers, drunken soldiers rampage through, raping women and girls.

Neema Maombi, 8, fled the northern town of Nyanzale, about 60 miles from the provincial capital of Goma, in early September with her sister Solange, 16. Her account of being caught in this complicated conflict is simple.

"I heard bullets," she said. "I ran."

Asked to describe her parents, the child plucked at her tattered blue shirt and said: "My mother is small. My father is short."

"My mother makes good food, like potatoes and beans," she added with a shy smile. "She makes banana beer."

UNICEF says that hundreds of children have been separated from their families since fighting flared in August, and that overall more than 1,600 children in the province are seeking their parents. Just 17 have been reunited with their families in the last three days in Kibati.