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Kilimanyoka, Congo: Congo rebels closed in relentlessly on the provincial capital of Goma on Tuesday, despite being attacked by UN peacekeepers in helicopters.
Government troops scrambled south in a full-scale retreat, fleeing in tanks, trucks and on foot.
Adding to the melee, tens of thousands of civilians jammed the roads to escape the rebel army. Many were carrying huge bundles of clothes, pots and bedding on their heads and swaddled infants on their chests. Even young children balanced sacks of food on their heads, walking along rutted roads in bare feet.
Thousands spent the night sleeping on the muddy ground, with no protection from tropical showers.
The UN refugee agency said it was struggling to prepare a camp outside Goma for an estimated 30,000 civilians fleeing the fighting. A hundred refugees a day, mostly women and children, are also fleeing across the border into Uganda, that country's Red Cross said.
On Tuesday, a UN helicopter gunship patrolled the sky at Kilimanyoka, 12km north of Goma.
Rebel spokesman Bertrand Bisimwa said he expected the helicopters to soon attack their front line, which he said is within 20km of Goma.
At Kibati, a few kilometres from the front line where thousands of refugees milled, young men lobbed rocks at three UN tanks with Uruguayan troops heading away from the battlefield.
"What are they doing? They are supposed to protect us," complained Jean-Paul Maombi, a 31-year-old nurse from Kibumba.
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