e, about 380 km east of Luanda, said the situation in the city had become critical, with residents and aid workers threatened. "They (UNITA) blew a bridge over the Rio Longo yesterday (Sunday), which puts the city in imminent danger," said a senior aid worker, who asked not to be named. "We are very, very concerned. The city and the people are truly isolated now." The aid workers spoke to Reuters by telephone from Luanda. UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, and government forces resumed a civil war in December, shattering a 1994 peace agreement. The renewed fighting prompted the United Nations Security Council to vote unanimously on Friday to pull its remaining 1,000 peacekeepers from Angola by March 20. The charity group Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF) said its workers in Malanje had reported constant shelling and fighting south of the city over the past three days. Malanje, and Huambo and Kuito 500 km southeast of Luanda, have been under siege by UNITA forces for the past eight weeks. The fighting has caused a humanitarian crisis as international aid groups struggle to distribute food to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Malanje, on a direct road to Luanda, is considered a possible gateway for a rebel advance on the capital. UNITA secretary general Paulo Lukamba Gato has said previously that the rebels aim to put pressure on all the capitals of Angola‘s 18 provinces, which includes Luanda. An Angolan Armed Forces general on Sunday played down the scale of UNITA‘s attack saying government forces had everything under control. On Friday, the rebels took the town of Cangandala, 25 km south of Malanje, and international aid workers began fleeing, leaving the town‘s 250,000 people to fend for itself. Military strategists said if Malanje fell it would strengthen UNITA‘s hold on the northwest of the country where it has already taken, and since lost, the town of Mbanza Congo, 50 km south of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.