DRC

BENI (DR Congo), June 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — An Indonesian soldier with the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in DR Congo was killed, and a second was injured, in a militia attack late Monday in the country’s troubled east, the UN said.

Their patrol was attacked around 20 kilometres from the city of Beni in North Kivu province, Sy Koumbo, a communications officer with the MONUSCO peacekeeping force, said.

“A Blue Helmet died and another is wounded but not seriously. He is in a stable condition,” she said.

KINSHASA, June 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has found President Felix Tshisekedi’s chief of staff guilty of corruption.

Vital Kamerhe was sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour on Saturday, after facing charges of embezzling almost $50m of public funds.

The judge presiding over the case was murdered in May.

The trial continued with a replacement judge after the death of Judge Raphael Yanyi in May. An initial police report said he had died of a heart attack.

KINSHASA, June 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Gold production in Democratic Republic of Congo continues to be systematically under reported while tonnes of the precious metal is smuggled into global supply chains through its eastern neighbours, a United Nations report has found.

The countries along Congo’s eastern border have long been conduits for gold worth billions of dollars mined using rudimentary means by so-called “artisanal” miners.

BUNIA (DR Congo), June 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nine civilians, five of them children, were killed late Tuesday in the eastern DR Congo province of Ituri, where some 1,000 civilians have been massacred since late 2017, local sources said.

The killing was the latest attributed to an ethnic militia called CODECO, the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, in the restive province.

They raided the village of Lenga in Djugu territory where they “killed nine civilians and wounded another,” Charite Banza, the local civil society president, said.

GOMA, DRC, Apr 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) – Seventeen people, including 12 rangers from Virunga National Park, died in an armed attack, by an unidentified armed group, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), local authorities said.

According to a press release from Nzanzu, Kasivita Carly, governor of the eastern province of North Kivu, where the attack took place, four passengers and a driver were also killed in a jeep, burned by the attackers.

BENI (DRCongo), April 22 (NNN-AGENCIES) — An Ebola flare-up in eastern Congo may spread again after a patient escaped from a clinic, complicating efforts to contain the disease that has infected six people since last week, the World Health Organization said.

The Democratic Republic of Congo was two days away from declaring the end of the world’s second-largest Ebola epidemic when a new chain of infection was discovered on April 10, following more than seven weeks without a new case.

Since then, health authorities have sought to contain any renewed spread of infections.

KINSHASA, April 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Democratic Republic of Congo’s justice ministry has freed 1,200 prisoners in new measures to decongest prisons and prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Those released from prisons were minor offenders according to Justice Minister Celestin Tunda.

The Makala Prison in the capital, Kinshasa, is among those decongested with 700 prisoners released from the facility.

More prisoners will be freed and the minister has urged magistrates and judges to only jail those involved in serious crimes like murder and rape.

KINSHASA, March 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Health authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have confirmed the first case of coronavirus in the country in the capital, Kinsasha.

The patient is a Belgian citizen who has been in the country for several days, Health Minister Eteni Longondo said.

“We are tracking people who came into contact with him so that they too can be placed in quarantine, and tested,” Longondo said.

DR Congo has been screening passengers arriving at the main airport in Kinshasa.

BENI (DR Congo), Jan 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Up to 24 people were killed Thursday in a fresh attack in DR Congo’s east attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces militia, taking the number of civilians killed over two days to more than 60, officials and a monitor said.

Twenty-four bodies were found at four sites near Oicha in the volatile Beni region, the area’s top administrator Donat Kibwana said.

The Kivu Security Tracker, a joint project of the Congo Research Group and Human Rights Watch put the toll at 19.

KINSHASA, Jan 23 (NNN-AGENCIES) - There’s a risk of proxy wars in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has warned.