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Fighting rages in Congo

KINSHASA (Congo) May 14. Rival ethnic groups renewed battle with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars in the streets of an eastern Congo city, as the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, struggled to muster a major international force to quell the bloodletting.

The latest fighting had more than 10,000 people in the embattled city of Bunia taking shelter under U.N. protection at the city's airport and a U.N. compound, a U.N. spokeswoman, Patricia Tome, said by telephone from the scene.

At the United Nations, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor warned that fighting in the region could lead to a `genocide'.

``Our evaluation of what we know — it could be a genocide, it could be a genocide,'' said Carla Del Ponte, who is in charge of prosecuting perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda and those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia.

Officials travelling with Ms. Del Ponte, who was in New York to meet Mr. Annan and Security Council members, said that on the basis of information made public about what was happening in Ituri, the legal requirements for genocide could possibly be met.

The 1948 genocide convention requires all signatories to try to prevent genocide, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hostilities in lawless eastern Ituri province further endanger a December 2002 deal meant to piece Africa's third-largest country back together after five years of war and occupation by foreign African armies.— AP

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