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 meet the needs 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 within reach of taking the city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, last week.

Wednesday Nairobi/Kogelo - US presidential favourite Barack Obama's Kenyan family were gathering for an election night party in the western village of Kogelo Tuesday as US voters went to the polls.

Around 20 family members had shown up at the senator's ancestral home in Kogelo, where his grandmother Sarah Obama still lives.

Journalists and well-wishers were locked out of the Obama household as the party got under way.

Nairobi  - The United Nations children's agency UNICEF Tuesday condemned the recent stoning to death of a 13-year-old Somali girl for adultery in the port town of Kismayo, which was taken over by Islamist insurgents in August.

The girl, Aisha Duhulow, was last week stoned to death for adultery under Islamic law, or sharia. Initial reports said that the girl was in her twenties.

UNICEF said that reports indicated the girl had not committed adultery, but been raped by three men while walking to visit her grandmother in the capital Mogadishu.

Nairobi, Goma  - It is a story that is as old as it is depressing: a rebel group more concerned with filling its pockets than the welfare of the people it says it is defending.

The rumbling conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which blew up into full-scale fighting for four days last week, conforms to this pattern.

Rebel Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, who last week routed the Congolese army and sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing in terror, says he is fighting to defend Tutsis from armed Hutu militia.

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

Nairobi/Goma - Desperate civilians who fled a relentless rebel offensive in east Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this week were beginning to return home Friday as a fragile ceasefire continued to hold, an aid agency said.

Rebel Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda on Wednesday evening called a ceasefire as his troops were on the verge of taking the major city of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Tens of thousands of people, many of them from the town of Kibumba, north of Goma, fled the advance as the Congolese army went into full retreat.