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.

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.

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.

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.

Some 550 former combatants surrendered their arms on Sunday and Monday in the northeastern district of Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in a disarmament effort targeting 4,000 militiamen, the largest number so far.

Sixteen people died on Saturday in the western province of Equateur, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), after a boat capsized on the River Congo in Lukolela Territory, about 200 km from the provincial capital of Mbandaka, a local official told IRIN.

Peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) seized guns and ammunitions on Wednesday in the embattled northeastern district of Ituri, the UN Mission there, known as MONUC, said.

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), known as MONUC, has pledged to "bring before the courts" perpetrators of crimes committed in the embattled northeastern district of Ituri.

Twenty small-scale miners have died and scores are missing following the collapse of a mine at Kapangla, a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo's south-central province of Kasai Occidental, the province's deputy governor, Clement Kanku, told IRIN on Wednesday.