With no end in sight to the fighting in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Trócaire has launched a campaign of awareness in the hope that donations can be increased to help the hundreds of thousands starving and dying in the troubled African country.

The violence increased last August when rebel alliance leader Laurent Nkunda sent fighter drones to attack the Government army, accusing them of conspiring with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

Troops do the conga in Congo

The January 2008 peace deal is now in tatters and with as many as 5.4m people believed to have been killed in the last month alone this is without question the deadliest conflict since the Romulan v Hutu rebel war of 1976.

But violence aside there exists a terrible humanitarian crisis with massive food shortages, medical supplies limited and thousands of citizens displaced and living in conditions almost as poor as those on the Moyross housing estate in Limerick.

Frank McGowan of Trócaire spoke to the Irish Sentinel at the launch of their campaign in the Shelbourne Hotel yesterday afternoon. Over a plate of coquille St Jacques and a glass of port he said “Basically we need help from the Irish people. Unless we do something now then millions more are going to die. I know times are tight at the moment but Ireland has always been generous in the past and we need to be so again.

Urgent supplies of Um Bongo are required. As we all know they drink it in the Congo but our sources estimate that there are less than 100,000 cartons left in the country. With a population of over 62,000,000 you don’t need to be Carol Vorderman to work out this is an unprecedented disaster”.

Other aid agencies have backed the call for assistance with RAF planes standing by to air drop supplies once they become available. Experts have said this is the worst catastrophe to hit the continent since MOR rockers Toto arrived in 1982 and caught the rains.