The only thing Manga Mutaka thought he would lose at the Mugunga camp for internally displaced people was his eyesight. In the end, he lost everything.

Mutaka and his family are Twa, or Pygmies, from the volatile Ngongo region of North Kivu province in war-torn eastern Congo. When they tired of a life on the run from escalating rebel clashes, they gave in and came to Mugunga, a camp that houses nearly 30,000 people, 15 km (9 miles) from North Kivu's capital Goma.

At 65, Manga's eyesight was failing fast, but he could just about see the purple mountains that cradle the camp. They reminded him of home.

In Congo's IDP camps, fear is as contagious as cholera. This week rebels attacked stations manned by government forces not far Mugunga. Although the camp was not directly targeted during the attacks, there was panic. Hearing the sound of mortar rounds and small arms fire, 28,000 already uprooted people poured into the streets outside Mugunga and fled.

"We slept in the forest last night," Manga told me, his tiny form bent around the eucalyptus twine holding his straw hut together. "The mosquitoes wouldn't let us sleep, so we came back to the camp, or what was left of it."

While the Mutakas were gone, looters took everything, from saucepans down to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) tarpaulin keeping the rain off the hut.

"Even the door is missing," Manga said, blaming the pillaging on soldiers loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda, whose Tutsi-dominated rebel forces have been at the heart of violence that has displaced more than 370,000 people since January. Congolese soldiers, Rwandan Hutu rebels and Mai Mai militia also make up the confusing hotchpotch of fighters causing misery in eastern Congo.

Clashes between government forces and rebels in North Kivu show no signs of cooling off, despite peacekeeping efforts by 4,300 U.N. troops in the region. In recent weeks, civilians have been caught in the crossfire. An attack on the mountain town of Lushebere killed seven.

But when I tried to enter Mugunga camp with a photographer, the Congolese police stopped us.

"Mais c'est une crise humanitaire!" the photographer shouted.

It was 6 p.m. by the time we were able to talk the police round and the sun was dropping behind the purple mountains that Manga thought would shelter him.

It was unusually quiet. Dusk in Mugunga camp is usually marked by women gossiping as they cook over charcoal fires, children playing beside the huts and excitedly screaming "Mzungu" when "white men" wander past. Even here, at an IDP camp in the deadliest war zone since World War Two (some 4 million have been killed since 1998), the music usually plays through the poverty.

But now grandmothers were praying beside straw huts that seemed naked without their UNHCR sheaths. The sun sank without an audience because everyone was staring at the ground. NGOs handed out blankets. As I wandered through the maze of huts, the volcanic ash that carpets most of North Kivu began to look apocalyptic. The cry of a toddler tore through the silence.

I met Charlie, a taller than expected Twa who showed me into his circular hut. "I'm just going to sleep like this," he said, gesturing to a bed of leaves. I sat down. Pieces of volcanic rock poked through.

I could see the sky.

Then I met Rudaga and his wife, a couple in their seventies with five children and even more grandchildren. "We'll be going to sleep hungry," his daughter Bizimana said. Rudaga pointed to a bottle of mottled yellow liquor. "We were saving the banana beer for a special occasion - perhaps the birth of our next grandchild - but we might as well drink it tonight."

I walked past Manga's hut. Eyesight, cooking utensils, tarpaulin, door, home, I thought, making a mental list of all Manga had lost. As I neared, I saw he was staring up at the shadow of the mountains, an almost accusatory look in his eyes. I had left "sanctuary" off the list.

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