Kinshasa

Two military observers from the United Nations mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been kidnapped in the town of Beni in the eastern Kivu region, rebels said on Friday.

President Joseph Kabila of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has become the first president of the vast country, formerly known as Zaire, to pay his annual income tax, an official said.

The commission overseeing the Democratic Republic of Congo’s transition to democratic rule released a new timetable on Tuesday for the setting up of an interim government and institutions.

A reconnaissance team from the French army has arrived in Democratic Republic of Congo to evaluate the needs of an international emergency peacekeeping force for the Ituri region to back up the United Nations mission, Monuc.

The number of victims in last Thursday’s air disaster, which occured when the rear doors of a cargo plane flew open shortly after takeoff from Kinshasa, sucking passengers to their death, ”will never be known”.

More than 200 people may have been killed when a door fell off a Russian-built aircraft flying over the Democratic Republic of Congo, a source at Kinshasa airport said on Saturday, as officials remained mute over the freak accident.

As many as 160 of an estimated 200 passengers on an internal flight in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were feared dead after a door on a Soviet-era cargo plane burst open in mid-flight, military officials at Kinshasa airport said on Friday.

The plane carrying the human rights minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ntumba Luaba, was hit by gunfire on Thursday as it was taking off from the troubled northeastern DRC town of Bunia.

Congo’s president granted a partial amnesty to the central African nation’s rebels, easing their entrance into a national-reconciliation government meant to end a four-and-a-half-year civil war.

A team of United Nations experts is due to begin investigations into a massacre in Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Ituri region, where hundreds of civilians were slaughtered two weeks ago.

A United Nations helicopter has been fired on as it took off from the town of Bunia in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s troubled Ituri district, the UN mission in DRC, Monuc, said on Tuesday.

A tornado that tore through remote villages in the central Democratic Republic of the Congo killed 164 people, destroyed homes and ruined crops, the country’s top health official said on Wednesday.

Wives of men sentenced to death in connection with the January 2001 murder of then-president Laurent-Desire Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have protested against the suspension of their visitation rights.

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as Monuc, confirmed on Wednesday that rebel groups in the northeast of the country had been engaging in acts of cannibalism.

Villagers of northeast Congo told UN investigators of cannibalism and large-scale rape and looting by rebels there, the UN representative in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said on Saturday.

Investigators have uncovered the remains of 38 people buried in a communal grave at the site where the United Nations is building new headquarters for its peacekeeping force in eastern DRC.

Sprawling on a gold lacquered sofa, bags under his eyes and sandals on his feet, Congo’s young and tired leader says he will do what he can to press his nation’s interminable war to a close.

Rebels from a small movement in northeastern Democratic of Congo have captured the town of Bafwasende from the Congolese Liberation Movement dominant in the area.

THE government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Saturday accused Rwanda of reinforcing its troops in rebel-held territory in the east of the country.

President Joseph Kabila of the DRC has rejected an offer of South African assistance in peace-making from two government ministers.

UN authorities are trying to locate 50 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) citizens who had gathered for UN police training, amid reports that scores of policemen had been slaughtered in the country’s rebel-held east.

The World Bank is proposing the cancellation of more than 80% of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s debt and hopes this will happen in the first three months of 2003.

Vodacom, the newest mobile operator in the DRC, reckons it can generate three times more sales per subscriber than in its flagship South African operation.

An estimated 104 civilians were killed and 75 000 displaced during recent fighting between government troops and Mayi-Mayi militias in the town of Ankoro, in northern Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Rwandan-backed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have accused a rival group allied to the Kinshasa regime of massacring nearly 400 civilians this week in the northeastern Ituri region.

President Joseph Kabila of the DRC says he wants to capitalise on the peace deal he signed with Rwanda through further peace accords with neighbouring Uganda and Burundi.

Nearly 3 000 Rwandan soldiers remain unaccounted for after the country’s final withdrawal of troops from war-ravaged Congo this weekend, prompting accusations on Tuesday from a Congolese official that Rwandan fighters were ”preparing to provoke troubles.”

A Ugandan-backed rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo said on Monday it has suspended its participation in peace talks being held in South Africa, complaining it had become ”marginalised.”

Four people are dead after clashes broke out on Thursday between rival supporters of presidential frontrunners Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba ahead of historic elections on Sunday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a report said on Friday.