UNITED NATIONS, June 4 (UPI) -- The World Food Program Friday appealed for an end to the looting that forced it to suspend food distribution across the Congo.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the eastern city of Bukavu said rebel troop withdrawal was not yet significant. Renegade rebel soldiers overtook the city of 500,000 earlier in the week.
WFP had been providing 150,000 people in South Kivu province with 3,500 tons of food a month through nutritional centers and hospitals, as well as to food-for-work and other programs.
Thousands of Congolese attacked U.N. offices and peacekeeping bases Thursday, angry that fewer than 1,000 U.N. peacekeepers were unable to prevent 2,000 to 4,000 rebels from seizing Bukavu, South Kivu's provincial capital, Wednesday.
The DRC's military in Bukavu unexpectedly collapsed, said the chief of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Jean Marie Guehenno.
A British diplomat told United Press International at U.N. World Headquarters in New York late Friday of "early reports" from diplomatic sources the situation was actually worsening and trouble spreading westward.
The DRC, the former Zaire, is the size of Western Europe.
