Angola/DRC: Angola expels more illegal Congolese miners

Medecins Sans Frontiere-Belgium said on Wednesday it had sent an emergency medical team to a sector of the Democratic Republic of Congo's border with Angola, following an announcement by the Angolan government that was expelling another 18,000 Congolese illegal diamond miners. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had already reported the arrival of 68,000 exhausted Congolese at the DRC border provinces of Bandundu, Kasai Occidental, Kasai Orientale and Katanga. "There have been massive expulsions for ten days now," Gilbert Gitelman, OCHA's field coordinator, told reporters on Wednesday in Kinshasa, "families have been separated, intrusive body searches have been conducted on women, children have given laxatives to expel hidden diamonds, and women and even some men have been raped in public."