Amsterdam - Proceedings in the trial of former Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo began in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday.

Lubanga, 48, faces charges of recruiting child soldiers during the brutal civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2008.

He is the first suspect to be brought for trial before the court, which is the world's first permanent tribunal authorized to deal with serious war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Nairobi/Kigali  - Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda has been arrested in Rwanda after attempting to stand against a joint Rwandan-Congolese military operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the operation's commanders said Friday.

Almost 4,000 Rwandan troops on Tuesday entered DR Congo under an agreement with the Congolese government to hunt down Hutu rebel forces formed after the 1994 massacre in Rwanda.

Nairobi/Goma - Confusion reigned Tuesday over who was in charge of the main rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo after reports that General Laurent Nkunda had been ousted were denied.

A group of officers from the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) on Monday sent a statement to the BBC saying they had ousted Nkunda for "bad governance."

However, a spokesman for Nkunda, who has been leading a rebellion in the east of the sprawling nation, then denied this was the case.

Fighting between the CNDP and government troops exploded in October after beginning to ramp up in August.

Freiburg, Germany  - German Catholic aid group Caritas said Tuesday that Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) massacred at least 400 people over Christmas in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a far higher figure than previously reported.

Caritas cited its own workers in Dungu-Durama, north-east DR Congo, as it put the death toll far higher than the 200 dead reported in some other quarters.

Ugandan army spokesman Paddy Ankunda backed up the report, saying the LRA had killed between 350 to 400 people in the past few days.

Kampala - The Ugandan rebel group Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has massacred 45 people in a church in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda's government-backed New Vision newspaper reported Monday.

The newspaper quoted witnesses as saying the LRA used machetes, swords and clubs to kill the people - amongst them women and children - who had taken refuge in a Catholic church near the border with the Central African Republic.

The LRA is now accused of killing around 90 people in a series of attacks over the Christmas period.

Military officials said they had killed 13 of the LRA guerrillas involved in the church attack and were pursuing the rest of the group.

The Democratic Republic of Congo's health minister confirmed the presence of deadly virus, Ebola in Western Kasai province. He added that Ebola has killed nine and infected 21.

He told media persons that analysis from samples taken on site confirmed the existence of the virulent disease, which kills up to 90 percent of its victims, mostly by puncturing blood vessels and spurring non-stop hemorrhage.