The UN mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported renewed clashes between national forces and an armed group, just one day after the Security Council authorized an intervention force to operate in the strife-torn east part of the country, a UN spokesman said here on Monday."The UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) reported fighting in Kitchanga, North Kivu, this past Friday, between the Congolese Army and the APCLS armed group, " said Eduardo del Buey, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, at the daily briefi

A former British intelligence officer claimed that Britain played a role in the assassination of Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, one of her friends has told the British media. Before she died three years ago, Daphne Park -- who was sent as an MI6 officer to the Belgian Congo in 1959 -- told a fellow member of Britain's House of Lords that she had helped coordinate Britain's role in Lumumba's elimination two years later.

Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo hit out Monday at a move by the United Nations to deploy a peacekeeping brigade to the country's restive east, saying it was instead choosing to "make war". "This is the war option that the United Nations is exercising," said the political leader and spokesman of the M23 rebel movement, Bertrand Bisimwa. The United Nations has chosen "to make war against one of its partners for peace", he said, instead of "encouraging a political solution" through talks in the Ugandan capital Kampala between the rebels and DR Congo's government.

Key facts on the Democratic Republic of Congo, after the UN Security Council approved its first-ever "offensive" peacekeeping brigade to battle rebels in the troubled east: GEOGRAPHY: The biggest and most populous country in central Africa at 2,345,000 square kilometres (906,000 square miles), it is almost as big as all of western Europe. The capital, Kinshasa, is located on the Congo River, the second-longest in Africa at 4,700 kilometres (2,900 miles).