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Congo volcano crisis deepens

GOMA, Congo -- Refugees are continuing to flee a devastating volcanic eruption in central Africa amid fears of a major humanitarian crisis in the region.

Hundreds of thousands of people left their homes after the Nyiragongo volcano erupted on Thursday, with smoking lava engulfing the town of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing an estimated 45 people and destroying homes and streets.

Experts said the eruption was the worst in central Africa for 25 years, with fires raging and tremours still being recorded on Saturday throughout the Rwanda-Democratic Republic of Congo border region.

Residents said thousands of refugees including children had not eaten or drunk anything since the start of the eruption. A large number of people tried to go back into Goma on Saturday morning through a blackened landscape shrouded in smoke and mist but could not find a way through the lava, Reuters reported.

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U.N. officials said more than 300,000 refugees clutching bedding and bundles of goods were heading eastwards into Rwanda, while others fled in boats to Bukavu on the southern tip of Lake Kivu.

Rivers of lava edged with black crust inched forward through the two main streets of Goma with the U.N. expressing "deep concern" for the situation, saying half of the city has been burned and destroyed. With lava having flowed into Lake Kivu, aid groups were establishing fresh water tanks so residents would have clean drinking water.

Sporadic gunfire was heard in Goma as soldiers tried to prevent looting, but the lack of overall crowd control allowed others to break into shops along deserted streets and take what little was inside.

A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said the compounds of the World Health Organization, Save the Children and other nongovernmental organisations were destroyed by the lava.

The United Nations said on Friday that 100,000 people had fled into other Congolese villages and as many as 300,000 more had fled into Rwanda.

But there were hopes that the flow of lava had slowed.

"Overnight the situation seems to have slowed a bit," Rwandan volcanologist Dieudonne Wafula said. "The lava slowed, but the big problem now which we have to deal with very quickly is the fires. Roads and houses and also the airport runway are being eaten by fire."

Wafula said promises that water trucks would arrive overnight had failed to materialise.

He said the eruption was the most destructive since the peak's last major convulsion in 1977, when a 1,000 metre-wide lake of lava burst through fissures in 3,469-metre (11,380 foot) high Nyiragongo's flanks at 60 km (40 miles) an hour, killing up to 2,000 in what experts said was the fastest lava flow on record.

Early on Saturday, the Red Cross and other agencies started distributing water and high energy biscuits to refugees on the road in Gisenyi.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan assured the Congolese and Rwandan governments that he would "put the assets of the United Nations to full use in assisting them in mitigating the consequences of this disaster."

He said Ross Mountain, assistant emergency relief coordinator, would be sent to the region to support U.N. teams already in place. A U.N. disaster assessment team is also heading to the area.

There are fears of outbreaks of choldera, diarrhoea and malaria among refugees.

On Friday, a two metre high river of molten rock poured from the volcano, engulfing villages on its slopes before flowing through Goma itself and on to Lake Kivu on the Rwandan border.

Gaping holes opened up in Goma, normally a city of more than 500,000 but now virtually a ghost town, and molten rock reduced roads and buildings to fiery ash. Parts of the runway at Goma's airport had disappeared under the smoking tide.

Fourteen villages in the path of the lava were said to have been incinerated.

Aid agencies were mustering their forces to help the refugees who fled over the border to Rwanda, said World Food Programme spokeswoman Brenda Barton.

The Nyiragongo volcano is one of eight on the borders of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.

The region is dense with tropical forests and home to rare mountain gorillas which inhabit the slopes of the dormant volcanoes.

Only two of the volcanoes are active -- Nyamuragira, which erupted early last year causing no casualties -- and Nyiragongo.

Nyiragongo was last active in 1994, when a lava lake in its crater reappeared, casting an orange light onto clouds at night.

-- CNN Correspondent Catherine Bond contributed to this report.



 
 
 
 


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