Sexual violence against women is taking place “on a massive scale” in wars and in countries emerging from conflict and the international response remains inadequate, one of the UN’s highest-ranking women told the UN Security Council.

UNIDENTIFIED attackers fired on United Nations offices in the northeastern Congolese town of Bunia, a day after UN troops detained army and security chiefs of a tribal militia.

AT least 54 people were killed this week in renewed tribal fighting in northeast Congo, close to the town of Bunia, where an international force has been deployed to keep the peace.

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.

Fresh clashes broke out today on the outskirts of Bunia in north-east Congo, where hundreds have died in recent violence.

Armed tribal fighters have warily approached new checkpoints set up by French troops today in the war-torn town of Bunia in north-eastern Congo.

IRELAND is to offer a crack force of army rangers to the EU-led mission to the Congo at a special meeting in Paris tomorrow.

FRENCH troops arrived in Congo yesterday to prepare the way for an international force charged with stabilising a region wracked by tribal fighting, a UN official said yesterday.

An advance party of French troops landed in lawless north-eastern Congo today to prepare the ground for an EU-led peacekeeping force.

THE European Union approved its first peacekeeping mission outside Europe and without help from NATO, deciding yesterday to send troops to strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in response to a UN plea.

France has introduced a resolution seeking United Nations authorisation to deploy an international force to lawless north-eastern Congo.

THE United Nations said yesterday it had found another 30 decomposing and mutilated bodies in the east Congo town of Bunia, bringing the death toll from days of fighting between tribal militias to more than 300.

Congo Pygmies have demanded the United Nations prosecute government and rebel fighters accused of slaughtering and eating them as fighting continues in the country’s dense north-eastern jungles.

THE mutilated bodies of 280 people have been discovered in the town of Bunia in eastern Congo after days of fighting between tribal militias, a United Nations official said yesterday.

CONGO rebels were yesterday accused of cannibalism with witnesses describing the mutilation and eating of the dead during more than a week of tribal fighting that killed scores and forced thousands to flee.

Congo rebels were today accused of cannibalism with terrified witnesses describing the mutilation and eating of the dead during more than a week of tribal fighting that killed scores and forced thousands to flee.

Two United Nations military observers who were missing for days in Congo’s troubled north-east have been “savagely killed,” a spokesman said today.

Fleeing civilians jammed roads out of an eastern Congo city by the thousands to escape rival ethnic militias battling for control with mortars and machetes.

More than 10,000 terrified civilians were sheltering at a United Nations compound in north-east Congo today as a fierce battle raged around them.

AMONG the survivors recovering in Kinshasa General Hospital after the Congo air disaster, which saw more than 100 passengers sucked out of their plane when the cargo ramp opened mid-flight, was a policeman, who gave his name only as Katembo.

United Nations peacekeepers have discovered a second mass grave in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Six people were feared dead after an aircraft en route to neighbouring Uganda crashed in rebel-held northeastern Congo in bad weather, rebel officials and the aircraft’s owners said today.

Ugandan soldiers have arrested a Lendu tribal warrior for the killing of six Red Cross workers in Congo, adding that the attack was a robbery, a top general and newspapers reported today.

Six International Red Cross workers, including two foreigners, have been killed in the Goma region of northeastern Congo in the worst single attack on the organisation in five years.