Congolese women and children have been raped and subjected to other abuses during a mass expulsion of migrant workers from Angola to Democratic Republic of Congo, a doctor, officials and the United Nations said.

Angola has deported thousands of workers in recent months, U.N. figures show, echoing previous purges over the past 12 years during which abuses also occurred, according to rights groups and the United Nations.

The size of the latest expulsion is not yet known, but 12,000 workers have passed through one border crossing near the Congolese town of Kamako in the past six months, according to previously unreported figures from the United Nations’ migration agency, the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Last month, U.N. staff visited the area and wrote an internal preliminary report on the situation, which Reuters has read.

“Girls and women are arrested wherever they are, without the necessary needs, detained and then separated from their children and husbands, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, sometimes raped,” the report said.

The report, which would have to be checked by various partner organisations before any possible publication, did not explicitly identify the perpetrators. A doctor working in the area blamed civilians in Congo and Angolan security forces.

A spokesperson for Angola’s migration authority, Simão Milagres, said there had been an increase in expulsions in the past few weeks but denied that rapes and other abuses had occurred.

“That’s not true,” he said. “I can guarantee that there isn’t an institutional attitude promoting violence against migrants.”

RISE IN CASES

The U.N. report did not say how many cases of abuse there were. But Victor Mikobi, a doctor who specialises in treating victims of sexual violence at a health centre in Kamako, said local clinics had recorded 122 cases of rape this year, unprecedented levels for the town, he said.