850,000 children displaced due to DRC violence: UN body

By Godfrey Olukya

ARU, Democratic Republic of Congo (AA) - A total of 850,000 children have been displaced in Greater Kasai region of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to clashes in the country, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Friday.

This makes the region one of the largest displacement crises in the world for children, UNICEF said in a statement, adding that children bore the brunt of extreme violence.

More than a million people have also been forced from their homes by waves of violent conflict in the region, it said.

''The lives of hundreds of thousands of children and their families in Greater Kasai have been turned upside down by this brutal violence,” Tajudeen Oyewale, UNICEF acting Representative in the DRC, said in the statement.

“A total of 1.4 million people, including 850,000 children, have been displaced, with at least 60,000 uprooted in the month of June alone,” Oyewale said.

UNICEF and its partners have implemented a cash assistance program for displaced people that provides households with $100 that can be used for basic necessities.

Kasai region has been hit with clashes since August 2016 when the leader of a militia group called Kamuina Nsapu was killed by police.

Since then the militia group has attacked the army, police and civilians leading to hundreds of death.

The Catholic Church in DRC said earlier that more than 3,000 people have died and over 1.3 million displaced during clashes in Kasai.