Evidence is increasing that foreign forces are being drawn into the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Eyewitnesses told the BBC Angolan and Zimbabwean troops were on the ground. While journalists report that some of Laurent Nkunda's rebel fighters are in the pay of the Rwandan army.

Global TV studio manager Daudet Lukombo was acquitted by a local magistrate’s court in Kinshasa/Gombe and was released from Kinshasa penitentiary at around 4 p.m., ending 41 days in detention. He was arrested during a police raid on the privately-owned TV station on the night of 11 September, after it broadcast a news conference by opposition legislator Ne Muanda Semi, the head of the controversial Bundu dia Kongo movement.

As a massive food distribution got under way Wednesday in six UNHCR-run camps for tens of thousands of internally displaced Congolese in North Kivu, the UN refugee agency prepared to hand out tonnes of shelter and household items. A four-truck UNHCR convoy carrying 33 tonnes of various aid items, including plastic sheeting, blankets, kitchen sets and jerry cans crossed Wednesday from Rwanda into Goma, the capital of the conflict-hit province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

With regard to what is going on in Eastern DRCongo, it seems that most people, both inside and outside of the country, have come to accept the most horrendous crimes as part of normality. It is difficult not to ask the following question: if these rapes were occurring in G8 countries, wouldn't there be emergency measure to put an end to it? Questions must be addressed to the leadership in the DRC, the African Union leadership: why is everyone waiting for someone else to do something?

Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s forces and government-backed Mai Mai militias deliberately killed civilians in Kiwanja, North Kivu province, on November 4-5, 2008, Human Rights Watch has said. UN peacekeepers based in the area were apparently unable to protect civilians from attack. Nkunda’s forces battled pro-government Mai Mai militias on November 4 and 5 in Kiwanja, killing a number of civilians trapped in the zone of conflict.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has accused UN peacekeepers of failing to stop rebel troops killing civilians in the east of the country. "People are being slaughtered and [UN peacekeepers] did nothing," a spokesman for President Joseph Kabila said. The comments came as regional leaders met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in Kenya for crisis talks.

With the DR Congo crisis presenting a complex mosaic of conflict, war, violence, rivalries, alliances, and competing interests, Jacques Depelchin reviews the background behind the country’s ongoing troubles and explores broader areas of responsibility. As the DRC seemingly destructs and self-destructs, the author asks whether people’s willingness to continue consuming mineral resources extracted from the country should more properly be situated in a tradition of Western peoples’ enjoying comforts at the expense of African populations dating at least as far back as the triangular Atlantic trade and subsequent colonial period. A fuller, more comprehensive understanding of the DRC’s history and Western history at large would reveal, Depelchin contends, an established practice of ‘doing away’ with figures deemed threatening to those in power, a practice of marginalisation that will ultimately have to be effectively tackled if future crimes against humanity are to be averted.

It is the UN's biggest and most expensive peacekeeping operation ever. But when things got serious in the Democratic Republic of Congo the blue helmets failed to defend the population from rebel troops and instead concentrated on protecting themselves.

The UN says it has credible reports that camps sheltering 50,000 displaced people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been torched. Aid groups say they are struggling to reach an estimated 250,000 people in the region fleeing fierce fighting between government and rebel forces. Intense diplomatic efforts are under way to end the crisis.

Fierce fighting between government and rebel forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo has caused a humanitarian catastrophe, the Red Cross has said. It said the number of displaced people was growing by the hour and that the precarious security situation was making it difficult to deliver aid. Intense diplomatic efforts are under way to end the crisis, which has displaced a total of 250,000 people.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner has suggested the EU should do more to help UN peacekeepers in Congo, but there is not enough political will among member states to send an EU battlegroup to the conflict-struck African region. "It's very difficult to say what we can do outside of diplomatic efforts, efforts at persuasion, and efforts so that peace can be achieved by leaning on the two countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda," Mr Kouchner said on Wednesday (29 October).

Reviewing the entrenched state of crisis engulfing the eastern DR Congo, Joseph Yav Katshung argues that it is only through strong political will that the conflict will begin to stem. As the author underlines, this is will on the part of a range of domestic and international actors, whose ability to articulate a clear strategy for enhanced civilian protection will ultimately determine whether vulnerable populations see the consequences of armed conflict reduced. Only on the strength of sustained political commitment, Katshung emphasises, can rhetoric translate into reality.

Heavy fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has driven at least 1 700 people from a refugee camp, the United Nations said on Tuesday, and an aid group said a team of its medical workers has been trapped in a nearby hospital. The fighting resumed late on Monday night in the eastern villages of Tongo and Nyanzale, said Lieutenant Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, a spokesperson for the UN mission in the DRC.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has confirmed its earlier decision to suspend the trial of a Congolese rebel leader accused of recruiting child soldiers to serve in his militia, but ordered that he remain in detention pending another hearing. In a ruling issued in The Hague, the ICC’s five-member appeals chamber unanimously dismissed an appeal by prosecutors against the trial chamber’s decision in June to stay the proceedings against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo.

Franck Masunzu, a journalist and host of a local community radio show in the town of Walikale, in North Kivu province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was released early in the afternoon of 14 October 2008 after being held for two days by the local office of the Agence Nationale des Renseignements (ANR), the state intelligence agency.

At least 5,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have arrived in South Sudan in the past two weeks after fleeing “ferocious” attacks by the notorious Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the United Nations refugee agency reported. Ron Redmond, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva that an estimated 150 Congolese are crossing every day into the villages of Sakure and Gangura, in the Yambio area of South Sudan.

An $8.6 million grant to enhance agricultural production and provide food security for poor people in rural areas of the Republic of Congo was announced today by the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The initiative is part of a larger $18.7 million project in the Likouala, Pool and Sangha Departments, which aims to reach 250 villages and some 20,000 households, according to a news release issued by the Rome-based UN agency.

The 2008 Professor Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize is awarded to Pastor Bulambo Lembelembe Josué, right, for his dedication to end the plight of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The board of the Rafto Foundation has decided to award the Rafto Prize to Pastor Bulambo Lembelembe Josué. The church leader brings hope to Eastern Congo, and his work brings hope for peace, reconciliation and human dignity to a people that have suffered from the deadliest conflict since World War II.

About 1,200 Congolese have sought shelter in southern Sudan in recent days to escape brutal attacks by members of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) that have included the abduction of children and the torching of homes, the United Nations refugee agency has reported.

United Nations attack helicopters firing rockets went into action in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after rebels attempting to advance against the Government opened fire on UN reconnaissance planes. The UN action was the latest in a series of strikes against the rebel Ituri Patriotic Resistance Front (FRPI) in Ituri province, and comes less than two weeks after peacekeepers from the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) sent in combat helicopters against another rebel group in North Kivu province, to the south.