Some 1,000 people have arrived in the southern suburbs of Bunia, the main town of Ituru District, fleeing fighting approximately 50 km farther south, according to local officials.

Hundreds of civilians have been displaced by fighting between United Nations-supported government troops and militiamen in the northeastern province of Orientale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bunia, Ituri District.

Despite relief aid having reached some 6,000 war-displaced people in the northeastern district of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), humanitarian officials are worried that tentative calm in the area could deteriorate.

The Security Council today called on the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to take immediate steps to bring to justice those responsible for Monday?s attack on United Nations peacekeepers, which left eight of them dead and five wounded.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) military?s efforts to flush militias from the area south of Lake Albert in Ituri district has resulted in serious human rights violations, including the summary execution of six fishermen, rapes, imprisoning children and forcing villagers to transport stolen goods, the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUC) said today.

An armed, unidentified group killed eight peacekeepers from Guatemala and injured five others on Monday, during an ambush in Garamba National Park, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) near the borders of Sudan and Uganda, according to the United Nations Mission in the DRC (MONUC).

An enormous humanitarian crisis is emerging in the Democratic Republic of Congo?s Katanga Province, with tens of thousands of people being displaced, but so far the government and the international community are doing little.

The United Nations says U.N. and Congolese troops have launched an offensive against a militia group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

A convoy of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) was attacked yesterday by a group of militias in the Mahagi area, in the north-eastern district of Ituri, a few hours from the constitutional referendum. MISNA learned the news today from Radio Okapi of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC).

Congo's President Joseph Kabila said Thursday that his country's voters must accept a proposed post-war constitution later this month if elections are to be held in 2006.