Nairobi/Goma - The UN childrens emergency fund UNICEF warned Monday of the danger of a cholera catastrophe in the conflict-ridden North Kivu region of eastern Congo, with international relief groups saying their work was being hampered by the security situation.

UNICEF coupled the warning with a demand that safe access to the region's refugees be guaranteed.

It said that its workers were fired at north of the North Kivu provincial capital Goma, when an aid convoy was caught between the rebel militias and government forces last week. After that incident, aid workers were pulled back to the nearby city of Rutshuru.

Meanwhile aid groups were awaiting the arrival of British government planes in Goma bringing relief supplies, a UNICEF spokesman said.

Cholera was now spreading among the more than 250,000 refugees in Goma and the surrounding region, a UNICEF report said.

It said it feared that where UNICEF could not do its work due to the security conditions, cholera could take on "catastrophic" proportions.

At the totally overfilled refugee camp in Kibati, nearly 50 cases had been registered so far. Red Cross workers were now building latrines to try to improve hygienic conditions.

The UNICEF warning follows on political developments, in which the leaders of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), meeting in Johannesburg at the weekend, agreed in principle on sending forces to the conflict region.

Blaming the "intransigence" of Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda for the breakdown of past regional peace agreements, SADC Executive Secretary Tomaz Salamao, reading from a communique, said that SADC "would not stand by and witness incessant and destructive acts of violence by any armed groups, against innocent people of DRC.

"DRC Armed Forces need to be assisted in order to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country," SADC said, resolving to provide that aid and to send peacekeepers to oversee a ceasefire "if and when necessary" in North Kivu province. (dpa)