Police in Congo’s capital prowled opposition neighbourhoods, rounding up young men who were seen being dragged out of their homes and shoved into waiting cars, a day after the government announced that the country’s opposition leader had lost the disputed presidential election.

UN peacekeepers from Pakistan arranged armed escorts and provided food for illegal gold smugglers in eastern Congo but did not themselves trade weapons for gold, according to a UN report.

People in the Democratic Republic of Congo have finished voting in an election that marks the climax of its four-year postwar transition.

IT IS disappointing that some commentators view the dispatch of a small, UN-backed military force to the town of Bunia as a sufficient response to the horrors currently plaguing the Ituri region of the Congo.