New levels of hostility were reached in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) struggle with renegade General Lawrence Nkunda.Two hundred fifty thousand Congolese villagers have been driven from their homes since August, fleeing gunfire and bombings that escalated last week.

Dusty village roads packed with fleeing families and all the essentials that they could carry strapped to their backs and perched atop their heads.

“I’m going to Rwanda,” said Safi Dayoo to The New York Times as she trudged with her six children to the border to get there by sundown.

The besieged villagers never truly recovered from the 1994 Rwandan genocides and subsequent civil wars. Four million people have died in the Congo since 1998 from malnutrition and disease, the consequences of war.

Almost half are children under five.

Ethnic hatred fuels the conflict. Five hundred thousand Tutsi people were killed in the Rwandan genocides and the indicted Hutu militiamen escaped to the Congo. Nkunda has accused the Congolese government of failing to protect the Tutsi people from the escaped militia.

“Nkunda feels threatened by the Hutu soldiers who ran into DRC after the genocide and he feels he should protect his people from being murdered by the Hutus, which he thinks that the DRC government is supporting,” said Kevin Muhanji, a sophomore from Kenya. “What he is doing is actually killing the Hutus in the name of protecting the Tutsi with the support of Paul Kagame of Rwanda.”

Nkunda’s highly trained army is currently entrenched in the hills outside of the city of Goma, tentatively adhering to his own call for cease-fire. His advance was no match for the overwhelmed national army who left its own path of destruction upon retreat. The rebel army has gained two military bases in as many weeks and has become a force that the government has to deal with.

“Today we are strong because the international community understands that we are a cry for freedom,” said Nkunda to NPR. Ironically, Nkunda says he speaks for all Congolese people who have suffered through civil wars, poverty and victims of government neglect.

However he will not acknowledge his connection between the desperate villagers and his actions.

“That’s the cost of freedom,” he said, “I expect Congolese to suffer. Freedom is not a gift. You have to suffer for it and fight for it. And we are ready to suffer, but be free forever.”

Meanwhile, despite having 17,000 peacekeepers in the Congo, the U.N. is under attack for failing to feed and protect civilians.

U.N. soldiers have been shooting at rebels from helicopters trying to stop their advance. On top of that they failed to protect the civilians from defeated and demoralized rogue government soldiers who raped and pillaged on their retreat.

Frustrated and hungry protesters smashed windows at U.N. headquarters while the newly appointed general of the peacekeeping mission unexpectedly resigned.

According to the Washington Post, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon conceded the 17,000 troops were “stretched to the limit.”

Taking advantage of the tenuous cease-fire, the starving refuges have been slowly returning to their homes and more importantly their fields. There, they might have a chance of survival that the U.N. has not been able to provide

“The U.N. has been in the area for quite some time and they have always thought that it is not as serious as it may seem to be now,” said Muhanji. “The U.N. has never taken the African issues serious the way they took the Kosovo matter.