The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, appealed on Friday for US $217,000 to fight cholera the Democratic Republic of Congo's South Kivu Province, where at least 34 people have died of the disease since December 2004.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) plans to deploy a police brigade in the northeastern district of Ituri to protect civilians from militias, Interior Minister Théophile Mbemba told IRIN on Monday.

Some 43 people have died and 13 others infected following an outbreak of pneumonic plague in the mining area of Zobia, in the region of Bas-Uele in Oriental Province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an official in the Ministry of Health told IRIN on Monday.

A month-long strike by doctors, nurses and other medical personnel in government hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has resulted in 1,360 deaths in the capital, Kinshasa, an official of local human rights NGO said on Wednesday.

The International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) has urged the Congolese government to vet and prosecute former militia leaders instead of appointing them to high-ranking positions in the newly integrated national army.

Congolese and Rwandan military officers have activated a joint verification mechanism for the common border between the two countries, an administrator in Congo's eastern province of South Kivu said.

Leaders of two Mayi-Mayi militia groups in the southeastern province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) agreed on Tuesday to disarm their combatants during a ceremonial destruction of weapons in the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.

A deluge on Monday night left eight people dead and many more missing in and around the town Uvira in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Armed militiamen have burnt down a village in the district of Ituri, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, forcing at least 1,500 residents to flee to nearby localities, Rudi Sterz, the interim coordinator of German Agro Action in the area told IRIN on Friday. The affected village, She, is 60 km northeast of Bunia, the main town in Ituri.

At least 34 people have died from cholera in areas along Lake Kivu in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a senior health official in the affected province said on Thursday. Another 2,152 people have been infected in the cholera outbreak, which began in early January, Dr Guyslain Bisimwa, medical inspector for South Kivu Province, told IRIN.