Tens of thousands of refugees in the Great Lakes region have started returning home, but without adequate support they could reignite conflicts and end up joining the millions of people displaced within their own countries, a senior UN official said on Tuesday.

Members of the UN Security Council are due to begin on Saturday a 10-day visit to Africa's Great Lakes region, that will take them to Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

The repatriation of Congolese refugees who have been living in camps in western Tanzania began on Wednesday with the first batch of 282 leaving for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has announced.

A senior Rwandan government official dismissed on Thursday allegations that the army was responsible for a massacre nearly 10 years ago of hundreds of people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), whose bodies were discovered recently in mass graves.

A group of Ugandan rebels from the LRA penetrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raiding the village of Losa, five kilometers from the border with Sudan.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, will begin facilitating the repatriation of approximately 150,000 refugees from Tanzania to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on October 15, according to a statement it issued on Friday from Kinshasa.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Tanzania have agreed at a meeting to repatriate 152,000 Congolese refugees to South Kivu Province in September, despite concerns by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, about the security and human rights conditions there.

The European Commission has decided to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) four million euros to support its programmes protecting people displaced by armed conflicts, deprived of their freedom and separated from their relatives in three central African nations as well as in several nations in Asia, the EU Information Office announced on Monday.

Some 1,000 refugees in camps in Tanzania returned to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) late in July in order to register to vote in the 2006 general elections, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

The deployment of United Nations troops has forced Rwandan rebels to withdraw from several areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, including a national park.