Nairobi/Goma - A United Nations aid convoy taking supplies behind rebel lines in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not enough to meed the needs of hordes of desperate refugees, aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of civilians remain displaced after rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda's forces routed the Congolese army and came on the brink of taking the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, last week.

"Even with today's ... aid delivery, displaced people throughout North Kivu continue to be in urgent need of food, clean water, healthcare and basic items like blankets and shelter materials," MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders in English, said in a statement.

Aid agencies say at least 250,000 people have been displaced since renewed fighting erupted between Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People 
(CNDP) and government forces in late August.

As many as 50,000 of these people fled during the four days of fighting last week, many of them to the Goma area.

The UN aid convoy, which set out yesterday, is delivering urgent health supplies through an aid corridor guaranteed by Nkunda to the town of Rutshuru, where health centres were looted and camps for the displaced burned to the ground.

"The convoy has started stocking up local health centres that were looted to allow them to open again," Ivo Brandau, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in DR Congo, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The twelve-vehicle convoy is also to evaluate the needs of the displaced, as little is known about how they are surviving.

Many are reported to be subsisting on berries and wild roots in areas where aid has not been able to penetrate.

"We are trying to find out where all the people are ... we anticipate the need for food, water, health and sanitation," Brandau said.

Other refugees have taken advantage of the October 29 ceasefire to begin trudging home to their villages from Goma, where Congolese troops last week went on a looting and killing spree despite the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo saying the city was "under its control."

The ceasefire has so far held, although Nkunda's troops have retained control of the territory they seized.

Diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis have continued frantically since the ceasefire.

British and French foreign ministers David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner over the weekend met DR Congo President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa and Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali.

The Congolese and Rwandan presidents have agreed to attend a regional summit aimed at resolving the conflict, most likely to be held in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he would attend the meeting if it took place.

Western diplomats feel that the only way to resolve the conflict is to bring Rwanda and the DR Congo together at the table.

DR Congo has accused Rwanda of backing Nkunda and there were some reports of cross-border firing during the fighting. Nkunda says he is fighting to protect Tutsis from armed Hutu groups.

Many Hutus fled to Congo after the 1994 massacres in Rwanda when Hutu militants killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the space of a few months.

The CNDP and other groups in January signed peace accords designed to end sporadic clashes that occurred during 2007, four years after the 1998-2003 war ended. However, clashes began again in late August and have only ramped up in ferocity.

The UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo (MONUC) has backed up the Congolese army, even pounding CNDP positions with helicopter gunships, but it has been unable to hold back the rebel tide.

MONUC chief Alan Doss said last week that his troops, which number 17,000 across the whole of the sprawling central African nation, were stretched to their limit by the conflict.

However, Doss on Monday rejected criticism by the New York Times that MONUC was powerless in the DR Congo.

"It's deeply unfair to those at the front lines," Doss said. "We found ourselves caught between the two sides."

Calls for more UN troops to be deployed in the country have so far not been answered with any firm commitments.

More than 5 million people are estimated to have died as a result of the 1998-2003 war in the resource-rich nation, most of them from hunger and disease.

The conflict is often referred to as the African World War, owing to the large number of different armed forces involved. (dpa)