DRC: Relief efforts blocked in northern Katanga as fighting continues

The international humanitarian aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says that the army in northern Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has blocked relief workers from entering the area since beginning a military campaign against local militias there in mid-November. "We think there are many people who need assistance," the coordinator of MSF's Emergency Team in the DRC, Laurence Sailly, told IRIN on Monday from Kinshasa. However, MSF said as it could not get close to the front line it could not give a reliable estimate of the scale of the problem.