More than 80 children, some as young as eight years old, have been rescued from an armed group in the southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and are being reunited with their families, the UN said on Friday.
The 82 youngsters, including 13 girls, had been recruited by force by the Mai Mai Bakata-Katanga militia who are active in the restive province of Katanga, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) said in a statement.
The youngsters, aged eight to 17, were separated from the militia on Sunday and Thursday thanks to the joint efforts of local child protection agencies in the province, MONUSCO added.
The children had reportedly been recruited over the past six months.
REUNITED
Forty of the rescued children “were immediately reunited with their families, while the remaining are receiving interim care pending reunification,” the statement read.
MONUSCO head Martin Kobler said the UN was “extremely concerned” about ongoing reports of active recruitment by armed groups in the eastern DR Congo.
“Children face unacceptable risks when they are recruited for military purposes,” he said.
“The recruitment of children, particularly those under 15 years of age, could constitute a war crime and those responsible must be held to account, he added.”
MONUSCO estimates that 163 children, including 22 girls, have been separated from Mai Mai Bakata-Katanga fighters since the beginning of the year.
Katanga, the home province of Congolese President Joseph Kabila, is regularly engulfed by secessionist unrest dating back to 1960 when the mining province announced it was seceding from the rest of the nation, triggering a long series of wars and rebellions.
MINERAL WEALTH
Katanga Province is the richest part of the country, with various mineral resources including copper, which is the mainstay of foreign exports.
Tensions have been rising in recent months, with the Bakata-Katanga complaining about what it sees as the unequal distribution of wealth between the poorer northern parts of the province and the richer southern areas, where foreign firms operate.
In March, clashes erupted between army troops and the militia group, including child fighters, in the provincial capital of Lubumbashi, leaving 23 dead.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS