UN Agency Airlifts Aid To Newly-arrived Refugees from DR Congo

The United Nations' refugee agency on Sunday airlifted its first batch of relief supplies to assist over 11,000 people who fled a recent surge violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations refugee agency said.
The U.N. said that more than a million civilians have been displaced inside the DRC since a brutal conflict broke out in the Kasai region in mid-2016, with about 25,000 asylum seekers crossing into Angola.
"Arrivals are in urgent need of life-saving assistance, including food, water, shelter and medical services," the U.N. Refugee Agency's (UNHCR) southern Africa representative, Sharon Cooper, said in a statement.
A cargo aircraft carrying mosquito nets, blankets and sanitary items flew in from Dubai and landed near Dundo, about 100km from the Angola-DRC border, where the UNHCR has set up makeshift centres sheltering refugees, the agency said.
The U.N. said it would send more relief items to Angola in the coming days.The brutal conflict in DRC's previously peaceful Kasai region has already displaced more than one million civilians within the country since it began in mid-2016. Angola is currently hosting some 56,700 refugees and asylum-seekers, of whom close to 25,000 are from the DRC.

Source: QNA