Republic of Congo

GOMA, Congo (AP) — Two high-ranking military officers in northeast Congo were arrested Monday for taking part in a crackdown on protests last week that left 43 people dead and another 56 severely injured, authorities said.

Interior Minister Peter Kazadi said police arrested Commanders Mike Mikombe and Donat Bawili, who respectively headed the Republican Guard unit and the Congolese armed forces regiment in Goma, the eastern city where the violence unfolded.

KINSHASA, June 19 (Xinhua) -- About 2.8 million people have been forced from their homes since March 2022 in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, the three conflict-plagued provinces in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Monday.

The central African country now has 6.3 million internally displaced people, the highest number in any African country, the OCHA said in a press release.

05 June 2023; MEMO: The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has signed an agreement which gives a company in the UAE exclusive export rights of locally extracted gold for 25 years as well as a preferential tax rate of 0.25 per cent. The deal was apparently finalised late last year in an effort to eliminate the Congolese informal, or artisanal, mining sector.

BRAZZAVILLE, May 20 (Xinhua) -- President of the Republic of the Congo Denis Sassou Nguesso on Saturday attended a ceremony for the opening of a road construction project launched by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) in the country's northern province of Sangha.

BRAZZAVILLE, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Africa is witnessing an exponential rise in cholera cases amid a global surge, as cases recorded on the continent in the first month of 2023 alone have already risen by more than 30 percent of the total caseload recorded in the whole of 2022, said the World Health Organization (WHO) in a statement released Thursday.

GOMA, Congo (AP) — A suspected extremist attack at a church in eastern Congo killed at least 10 people and wounded more than three dozen, according to the country’s army.

A group linked to Islamic extremists was suspected of being responsible for a bomb that went off in the Pentecostal church in the North Kivu province town of Kasindi, military spokesperson Anthony Mwalushayi told The Associated Press by phone.

BRAZZAVILLE, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese path to modernization serves as an "example" for developing countries, especially African countries, General Secretary of the Congolese Labor Party (PCT) Pierre Moussa has said.

In a recent written interview with Xinhua, Moussa spoke of the Chinese path to modernization, saying that this "concept through innovation," among other things, would "enlighten many countries in the world," especially countries on the African continent.

KINSHASA, Dec 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — M23 rebels killed at least 131 civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Nov 29-30 according to preliminary findings, the UN mission in the country said in a statement.

Authorities in Kinshasa had said that some 300 people, almost all civilians, had died in M23 attacks in the village of Kishishe in the eastern North Kivu province. The group had denied being behind the massacre, blaming “stray bullets” for the deaths of just eight civilians.

GOMA, Congo (AP) — Rebels seized two major towns in eastern Congo after fierce fighting Saturday, doubling the territory they now control, a civil society leader and residents said.

Fighting between the Congolese army and M23 rebels intensified in the vicinity of Rutshuru Centre and Kiwanja on Saturday, with heavy gunfire breaking out in the morning.

John Banyene, president of the local civil society, told The Associated Press that the rebels now controlled Rutshuru Centre and Kiwanja, which is 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the regional capital, Goma.

NYIRAGONGO, Congo (AP) — The last thing Pasika Bagerimana remembers before her sons died were their cries of hunger. But the 25-year-old mother had nothing to feed them.

“‘Mom, I need to eat. Can you give me food?’” they pleaded with her. Daniel, 2, and Bonane, 5, died just weeks apart in July after fleeing violence in their village in eastern Congo between M23 rebels and government forces.

Bagerimana worries her remaining two children might be next. “Hunger is killing people,” she says, seated in a cramped room she now shares with dozens of other displaced people.