News:Militia attacks displaced children with machetes in war-ravaged DR Congo

A two-year-old girl is left with serious wounds after being attacked by militiamen hacking like they were ''trying to kill a goat''

It's difficult to imagine the circumstances in which a man could hack a two-year-old's face with a machete or what would drive him to do it.

But Rochelle's extreme youth didn't spare her from the anger and rage of the militia who stormed her village in lturi Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo last month.

Her face has a deep scar stretching across it,just missing her left eye and there is a wound on the top of her skull where her attacker had another go with his machete.

How she survived is a testament to the bravery of her father,Rechard Mynei ,who is standing protectively behind her as we meet them.

He had already seen his wife hacked to death in the village of Che where they lived.

It was pitch-dark and the family-like everyone in the village-had been asleep when the attackers stormed their community.

In the mayhem and panic which followed, the men started slashing at his youngest child.

Richard intervened, fighting with the militia as they swung their machetes around , hacking at his head and his neck, slashing his lower back.

His eldest daughter Mave began running but two of the men managed to outrun the 11-year-old, chopping at the back of her head and neck and slicing her collar bone.

''They cut me like someone who was trying to kill a goat,'' she tells us.
''Then the second one came and just roughly cut my hand.''

''These people are bad they just wanted to kill me''

She holds her left hand tenderly.

The limb below the elbow has gone.

The stump she has been left with is still a mass of stitches covered in purple medication to stop infection.

The only child left uninjured is four-year-old Francian who appears to be the mother figure for her little sister.

She lifts the toddler up onto her hip as Rochelle begins crying.

The Mynei family are joined by nearly ten thousand people who have fled fighting and are now living in a squalid camp in Bunia.

They live in a rickety shelter built with thin bamboo reeds and covered with plastic, part of the Democratic Republic of Congo's growing number of interally displaced people scattered across the country.

DRC now has more 4.5 million who have fled their homes from fighting the largest number on the African continent.

The terrified people talk about their homes being destroyed or set on fire.

They talk repeatedly of gangs of militia storming their communities armed with machetes, guns and arrows, driving them away.

The government line is that it is an old ethnic conflict between Hema and Lendu tribes, but most suspect it is stoked by an unpopular and autocratic government led by President Joseph Kabila, who has exceeded his mandate and is now under growing international pressure to step down and hold election.