Thousands of Hutu civilians were targeted when they visited sites set up to combat a measles epidemic, in areas controlled by the rebels, MSF said.

It denounced the attacks in North Kivu as “an abuse of humanitarian action”.

On Monday the UN withdrew its support for a government army unit, accusing soldiers of killing 62 civilians.

MSF said the clinics were targeted despite security guarantees from all parties to enable the mass immunisation scheme to be carried out in the Maisisi district north-west of the city of Goma

I have been very much around, just not in Nairobi.

I have spent a good deal of time lately travelling around Kenya, essentially reconnecting with my country, which went through such terrible convulsions while I was away.

I do this as the head of two small new organisations — Twaweza [We can do it] which is an East Africa-wide initiative aimed at empowering wananchi to solve their own problems, especially the provision of quality essential services like water, health and education — and the Zinduko [Awakening] Trust, which is involved more in societal issues —working with people to help build trust where ethnic issues have undermined them, and to address the suspicion and bad faith that infect all important national processes.

It is feared villagers in Rift Valley province are moving from traditional weapons such as spears to machine guns.

Government officials insist they are tackling the influx of illegal arms.

But they have been widely criticised for failing to punish the ringleaders of violence after the 2007 election, in which 1,300 people died.

A power-sharing government was formed in early 2008 to quell the violence.

It has been under international pressure to investigate the killings ever since, but its failure to organise a local tribunal has forced the International Criminal Court to step in to prosecute suspects.

It is not every day that ordinary folks from third world countries journey across continents for a date with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street. This significance is immensely enriched when, as in the case this week, the visit is motivated by an agenda calculated to tag at the conscience of the host; one with the potential for immense historical, economic and moral implications.

The quest for reparations for the horrendous and myriad ills perpetrated by imperialists all over the world has been a festering wound that is as old as the first taste of liberation.