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KINSHASA (Reuters) - United Nations troops killed up to 38 militia fighters during a raid by hundreds of peacekeepers backed by helicopter gunships in the Ituri district of eastern Congo on Saturday, a U.N. military source said. "It was serious fighting and 38 militiamen were killed," the source told Reuters. The clash came a day after a U.N. deadline expired for voluntary disarmament by militias, who have killed hundreds of civilians in the mineral-rich region. Earlier, the U.N. mission said South African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani peacekeepers exchanged fire with gunmen as they searched two militia camps 40 km (25 miles)...

KINSHASA, March 2 (Reuters) - U.N. Pakistani peacekeepers killed at least 50 to 60 militiamen in a clash in northeastern Congo on Tuesday, a week after nine Bangladeshi U.N. troops were killed there, senior U.N. sources said on Wednesday. "The number of militia dead is now 50, maybe 60, but there may be more because they were engaged by helicopters as well," said a senior source in the U.N. peacekeeping operation in the Congo. The clash happened 30 km (19 miles) outside the town of Bunia, the main city in the troubled Ituri region.

UPDATE 2-At least 8 UN soldiers killed in Congo-UN sources (recasts with death toll) KINSHASA, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Militiamen killed at least eight United Nations peacekeepers in an attack on a patrol in eastern Congo on Friday, U.N. sources in the country said. "There are at least eight dead and some still missing," one U.N. source told Reuters. A second U.N. source confirmed the death toll. Kemal Saiki, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the attack took place on Friday morning in the mineral-rich Ituri district, where the U.N. has deployed 4,800...

Two U.N. military observers were found dead after having been reported missing for several days in troubled northeastern Congo, a U.N. spokesman said Monday. The bodies of the unidentified observers were discovered in Mongbwalu, a gold mining center about 45 miles northwest of Bunia on Sunday where they were "savagely killed," said Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Congo. U.N. officials previously said the observers were from Jordan and Nigeria. The two officers last contacted colleagues on Tuesday, when they said the situation in Mongbwalu was tense as rival Hema and Lendu tribal fighters prepared to battle for...

The vast, mutilated African state of Congo is enjoying a ceasefire but butchery and theft continue apace while the West remains inactive reports Adrian Blomfield in Aru Nine-year-old Bahati lies on the ground whimpering, a urine stain slowly darkening the front of his baggy camouflage trousers. Two boys, perhaps three or four years older and also dressed in military uniform, stand over his body clutching bamboo canes in their hands. A boy soldier in the eastern Congo They look across at "General Jerome", a former traffic warden who now heads the Armed Forces of Congolese Patriots, or FAPC, one of...