OVER 600000 civilians have been displaced by an upsurge in fighting in rebel-held parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the last few months, a senior United Nations official said this week. The new figure brings the total estimated number of displaced in the northern and eastern halves of the country alone to 1.6 million. Hardest hit have been the two eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, where some one million people have been displaced by violence since the war began in late 1998 – 350000 of them since this summer. – Reuters