The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, says an upsurge in fighting in Shaba province in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has sent thousands of refugees fleeing across Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania.

A UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a news conference in Geneva that two-thousand-five-hundred refugees arrived in Tanzania in the third week of November, seven times more than in the previous week.

He warned that there was no adequate shelter for the newcomers in the lakeside villages, and that heavy rain was making the situation worse.

The UNHCR says that since the rebellion against President Kabila broke out in August, some eighteen-thousand refugees have fled to Tanzania.