The UN Security Council is exploring "all options" to see how it can best respond to the crisis in Bunia, UN News reported on Monday following consultations between members of the 15-nation body at UN headquarters in New York.

Fierce fighting has broken out between thousands of ethnic militia in an eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with UN troops coming under heavy fire. Battles in the town of Bunia in Ituri province have left at least 18 people dead, but there are fears that the toll could be much higher. This week the bodies of many of those killed lay in the town's streets, some for days.

President Thabo Mbeki is to petition UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urgently to get UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to be more aggressive in defending civilians in the war-torn country, or to make way for African intervention, the Sunday Times reported in an early edition.

Witches haunt Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo's violent capital. With pinched faces, bloodshot eyes and swollen bellies, they are horrifying to see; plaguing the city's streets by day, and retiring when nights falls to stinking graveyards and typhus alleys. And all of them are children. Olivier's plight is all too common in war-ravaged Congo. According to Save the Children, of Kinshasa's estimated 30 000 street-children, virtually all have been abandoned by their families, having been accused of witchcraft.

Activists of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress opposition party in Kinshasa physically assaulted Baudoin Kamenda, a Radio France Internationale correspondent.

A journalist of Radio Television Nationale Congolaise sustained serious injuries during a beating by local authorities in the eastern city of Kindu in Maniema Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, a local source told IRIN that Dieudonne Bulongo Muzaliwa was making a good recovery.

The United Nations Observer Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) must urgently protect civilians threatened by renewed violence in the war-torn region of Ituri in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Human Rights Watch says. Following the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from the provincial capital of Bunia, Hema militias began fighting Lendu and Ngiti militias for control of the town.

International non-governmental organisations working in Congo have been closely following the recent progress made in the DRC on the road to peace and democracy. We consider the successful end of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue and the imminent installation of the transitional government as important steps on the way to re-establishing rule of law in DRC.

The follow-up committee for the inter-Congolese dialogue (ICD) has published its calendar for the establishment of various institutions of the two-year national transitional government to be installed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are among the world's five worst conflict zones in which to be a woman or a child, according to a new report issued by the international NGO Save the Children, ahead of Mothers' Day to be marked on 11 May.

Three million, three hundred thousand people dead in a four and a half year war. Sound familiar? Have you seen it on the news? Have you heard about it being debated by any parliaments or congresses or world conferences? In less than five years, the equivalent of the entire population of Chicago was wiped out in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That's the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Ireland being killed. Surely if something of this nature occurred, it would have made the headlines. It's too shocking and horrible to ignore, one would think. In this commentary, Michael Despines, now senior policy and programme adviser for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in New York challenges humanitarians to influence humanitarian policies that would result in real change.
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http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=3515

The international community must assume its moral and legal responsibilities to help end the devastating conflict that continues to plague the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Amnesty International said in a new report. The report details the human cost of the conflict and underscores the exploitation of the DRC's natural resources as the biggest single factor perpetuating violence in the country.

Close to 1,000 people fled Uvira, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Friday after fighting broke out between rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Goma (RCD-Goma) forces who control the town, and Mayi Mayi militia, local sources told IRIN.

Richard Malango, a cameraman with the Kinshasa-based private television station Tropicana TV, was arrested on 23 April 2003, in the morning. The cameraman was detained by officers from the Congolese National Police's Special Services branch, while filming a demonstration by activists of the opposition Union for Democracy and Social Progress party (Union pour la démocratie et le progrès social, UDPS) at Kinshasa/Gombe's central train station square.

At least 60 people, mostly women and children, were killed in a massacre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the weekend, Ugandan army spokesperson Major Shaban Bantariza said on Monday.

At just 13, Gisele Buhendwa possesses a tough exterior that reveals little. She tells her story in a matter-of-fact manner: her deep, scratchy voice never changing tone, and her scrawny, boyish body never showing a hint of emotion. The only physical sign that displacement, kidnapping and rape affected her, like thousands of other girls in war-tortured East Congo, is that she refuses to look anyone in the eye.

Congo's main rebel group says it has shunned the first session of a committee overseeing a power-sharing peace deal because of inadequate security guarantees. The accord is the latest attempt to try to end more than four years of fighting in Africa's third biggest country in which millions of people have died, mostly through hunger and disease.

US and Iraqi estimates of the numbers of dead in the war on Iraq put the combined figure at about 4 000. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, estimates are that up to 3.5 million people have died. If news value depended only on body count, newspapers would devote roughly 900 pages to the war in the Congo for every page devoted to the war on Iraq.

President Joseph Kabila was sworn in as the interim head of state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at a ceremony in the capital, Kinshasa, on Monday, news agencies reported. Kabila will preside over a transitional government to be formed soon for a two-year period, leading up to democratic elections.
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http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=33373

The yellow fever vaccine will be used for the first time by the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to inoculate some 700,000 children in 2003, the UN children's agency UNICEF said on Monday.