Although conflicts continue to smoulder in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), most refugees could soon return to their homes in Equateur Province, in the northwest of the country.

Despite 3,313 children being disarmed in the last six months in Congo's northeastern district of Ituri, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has expressed concerned over thousands others yet to be released by armed groups.

Once renowned for its food production, Djugu, a territory in Ituri, is rapidly degenerating into a food-deficit zone, according to local agriculture experts and UN agencies.

Cholera has broken out in a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), killing six people and infecting 60 others, an official from the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday.

Militiamen in Congo's Ituri District who failed to comply with a UN ultimatum to disarm will be hunted down, Gen Jean-Francois Collot d'Escury, chief of staff of the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), has said.

Leaders of a Rwandan armed group operating from eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced on Thursday their intention to end attacks against their homeland, according to the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC.

In response to fears that a recent outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in Angola could spread across the 1,750-km border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Congolese minister of health, Emile Bongeli, said on Tuesday that the government had set up a quarantine zone along the frontier.

A new UN report issued on Thursday said that efforts to stop UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from sexually abusing the local population have not been effective and it recommended establishing better mechanisms to investigate cases.

Three months after the resumption of fighting between Lendu and Hema militias in Ituri, a district in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a vivid picture of human-rights violations is emerging.

The Congolese government has arrested Thomas Lubanga, the leader of the Union des patriotes Congolais (UPC), a key political movement in the northeastern district of Ituri, a government official announced on Tuesday.