RISK OF FULL-SCALE WAR
The crisis in North Kivu has been worsened by the involvement of other groups such as the Rwandan FDLR rebels, who include ex-Hutu militiamen and Rwandan soldiers responsible for that country's 1994 genocide.
Human Rights Watch said Congolese politicians and foreign diplomats were now "scrambling to avoid full-scale war" in the province, and documented widespread cases of murder and sexual abuse.
"When the firing started, people started to flee in all directions. My mother was too old to flee and hid inside her house with eight family members and four neighbours," the survivor of a March attack by Nkunda's men told HRW.
The woman spent the night covered in long grass to hide herself but around dawn the fighters returned.
"The people inside the house had been speaking, a baby was crying and they had started a fire to heat food. Smoke was coming out. The soldiers knocked on the door and massacred eight people inside the house," she said.
She fled deeper into the bush as the rebels attacked her village of Buramba. When she returned, she found the bodies of her children and mother.
"The bodies were in latrines. I could see the feet of my mother sticking out," she said.
HRW called for diplomats to increase their pressure for a political solution in North Kivu.
"If their efforts ... produce no results, it will be the people of North Kivu who will suffer once more," it said.
