Around 800 families from Circa Boga and Tchabi, in the north-eastern Ituri region, in the Democtratic Republic of Congo, abandoned their homes due to renewed violence at the end of August, seeking refuge in Eringeti, in Beni, in the North Kivu province.

The commander of the Democratic Republic of Congo's 8th Military Region, in the eastern province of North Kivu, said on Monday some 350 troops from the 124th battalion had defected to join a dissident army general, Laurent Nkunda.

The UN Security Council on Monday authorised the temporary deployment of additional personnel and equipment to the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the country's general elections due in 2006.

Congolese Defence Minister Adolphe Onusumba has confirmed a cholera outbreak among government troops in Goma, in North Kivu. The Minister specified that 10 soldiers of the fourth army brigade have died and 150 are infected. The army brigade of 3,200 men was headed in the past three days toward Ituri. Onusumba added that antibiotics and health material has been sent.

Hundreds of former militiamen now serving in the Democratic Republic of Congo's 4th army Brigade deployed to the troubled northeastern district of Ituri have been infected with cholera, Defense Minister Adolphe Onusumba said on Thursday.

Uganda has given six members of new rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo - the Congolese Revolutionary Movement - up to Thursday afternoon to leave the east African country or face arrest and prosecution, Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda has said.

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo sent 700 troops to the northeastern territory of Fataki on Thursday to provide security for the voter registration process, following an attack there earlier in the week by unidentified gunmen.

Unidentified militiamen shot dead an electoral official on Monday when they attacked a voter registration centre in Fataki, a town in the northeastern district of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Independent Electoral Commission Chairman Apollinaire Malu Malu said.

The demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration process (DDR) of 3,200 militiamen ended on Monday in Mushaki District, 30 km south of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, national Defense Minister Adolphe Onusumba said.

On 22 July 2005, the international medical relief agency, Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), announced that it was halting all medical and humanitarian aid to an estimated 100,000 people, almost half of the population displaced by civil unrest in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo district of Ituri.