The hunt for Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) intensified on Wednesday when the UN mission there, known as MONUC, deployed a team of observers to the border with Sudan and announced that it would send 150 peacekeepers by the end of the week.

After a five-year exile, some 300 soldiers of the former Zairian army who had fled to the Republic of Congo (ROC) arrived on Tuesday in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

UN and Congolese troops destroyed five rebel camps on Monday during a joint operation in the Virunga National Park, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a military spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Maj Hans Reichen, said.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, government troops backed by United Nations peacekeepers have begun to drive out Rwandan rebels a month after a deadline for their pullout expired.

A government team from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) arrived on Saturday in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, to begin the identification and registration of former Congolese soldiers who served under president Mobutu Sese Seko and now want to return home.

At least two people were brutally killed with machetes and another seven were abducted by Rwandan rebels in an attack attributed to the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), that since 1994 preside the forests of the east Democratic Republic of Congo.

Expressing serious concern about the continuing hostilities by militias and foreign armed groups in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the threat to elections in the country, the Security Council today extended the United Nations Organization Mission (MONUC) there until next September, with an additional 300 troops.

A meeting of representatives of the governments of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda on ways of handling foreign armed groups based in northeastern DRC did not take place on Thursday in Uganda as had been announced earlier, a Ugandan government official said.

A county court in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern town of Bunia in Ituri District sentenced a local militia leader to 15 years imprisonment on Thursday for forgery and extorting money from the public.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) told the Congolese government to carry out economic reforms rather than print more money to pay civil servants who are threatening to go on strike.