...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
(DRC) in the past two weeks, escaping a wave of resurgent inter-ethnic violence that killed more than 160 people, including babies and young children hacked to death.
The United Nations
...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly...
refugee agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday expressed deep alarm over the flare-up in violence in the DRC's Ituri province, which it said had seen "multiple attacks" involving the Hema and Lendu groups since early June.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from the Swiss city of Geneva, UNHCR front man Babar Baloch said the violence had forced more than 300,000 "desperate people" to flee their homes.
"People have been coming in with horrifying tales of how violence has been unleashed against them," he said, warning that the figure of those displaced was likely to be higher.
The cause of the latest flare-up was not immediately clear, but it occurred in a region where tens of thousands died in festivities between the Hema and Lendu between 1999 and 2003.
Attacks between the two communities had also displaced some 350,000 in late 2017 and early 2018, killing about 300 people before a tenuous calm took hold.
But last week, four Lendu traders were killed in attacks the Lendu blamed on the Hema, which locals say sparked off the latest violence.