Democratic Republic of the Congo

The UN Security Council called Thursday for "sustained efforts" in preventing the illegal trade of natural resources from the DR Congo, as gold in particular fuels conflict between armed groups in the region.

The head of the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is asking the Security Council for its continued support as the mission adds the fight against COVID-19 to its to-do list, while also dealing with a fragile security situation in the east of the country.

The United Nations has strongly condemned an attack believed to be carried out by rebel militia on peacekeepers serving with the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which left one Indonesian ‘blue helmet’ dead, and another injured.

DR Congo‘s military is receiving weapons and training from multiple countries without notifying the United Nations as required by a 2004 resolution, according to a recent report to the Security Council.

Militia fighters killed 16 people in a raid on a village in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, the latest in a spate of ethnic attacks that the United Nations has said could be crimes against humanity.

Democratic Republic of Congo declared a new Ebola epidemic on Monday in the western city of Mbandaka, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away from an ongoing outbreak of the same deadly virus in the east.

Jean Bamanisa Saidi, the governor of Ituri Province in northeastern Congo, tells DW he has called for international troops to the troubled region. Thousands have been killed by militia in the past three years.

Widespread and systematic killings, beheadings, rape and other barbaric acts by militia mostly from the ethnic Lendu community in northeastern Congo may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Dozens of civilians have been killed in eastern DR Congo in the latest of a string of massacres by the notorious ADF militia, a UN source and a local NGO told AFP on Wednesday. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) have killed hundreds in the region since late 2019, in apparent retaliation for a military offensive against their bases.