UN seeks $65 mn for DR Congo emergency

Kinshasa (AFP) - UN officials launched a bid Tuesday to raise $65.4 million (59.75 million euros) in emergency funds for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by violence in Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region.

Fighting between government troops and tribal militias has forced more than a million people from their homes over the past eight months.

The UN's humanitarian affairs coordinator Mamadou Diallo said the funds would help "respond to the urgent and multiple needs of 731,000 people during the next six months" in the Kasai area.

The vast majority of people in need of help are women and children, he added.

Thousands of those displaced have no access to food, clean water or health care, he said.

Fighting flared in the diamond-rich region after government troops last August killed tribal chief Jean Pierre Mpandi, also known as Kamwina Nsapu, who had launched an uprising against President Joseph Kabila.

Last week the United Nations said it had registered 1.09 million internally displaced people in the region as of April 1.

The UN has accused the Nsapu rebellion of using child soldiers and committing several atrocities, while also denouncing the disproportionate use of force by the military.

The UN has reported finding 40 mass graves, while two UN researchers investigating the violence have been abducted and killed.

On Monday the Congolese authorities released a video showing the grisly murders of the pair, and blamed Nsapu's men for the act.

It showed Michael Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalan, a dual Swedish-Chilean national, surrounded by seven people speaking Tshiluba, the main language of Kasai, armed with machetes, sticks and one with an old gun.

The two foreigners are quickly forced to sit on the ground before orders are barked out and they are shot. One of the victims is then beheaded.