NAIROBI (AlertNet) Â? At least 800 children kidnapped or lost during numerous conflicts in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been reunited with their families this year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.
The ICRC said this was the highest number for many years and a sign of improving security in some areas.
Persistent conflicts in mineral-rich DR Congo since 1996 have killed more than 5 million people -- many from hunger and disease.
Many parents had to watch as their children were raped or forcibly taken by militia groups. Other children lost their families when they fled the fighting and scattered across the country.
"We have been registering hundreds of children who are unaccompanied and forced to move with groups of refugees across the borders into Sudan and Uganda," Gernain Mwehu, ICRCÂ?s spokesman in north Kivu told AlertNet in a telephone interview.
Uganda and Sudan, CongoÂ?s neighbours, have had to cope with thousands of refugees seeking safety.
ICRC said it is still sheltering more than 1,300 children, whose families have not yet been located as some parts of north eastern Congo are still too insecure.
"This year we have reunited over 800 children because the security situation has improved in many areas of Congo," said ICRCÂ?s spokeswoman Nicole Engelbrecht based in Nairobi Kenya.
ICRC reunited only 358 children last year, a low figure it blames on insecurity.
An offensive by Congolese government forces alongside UN forces against Rwandan rebels -- accused of carrying out the 1994 Rwanda genocide -- has killed hundreds and displaced nearly a million Congolese.
Ugandan rebels, notorious for abducting thousands of children and turning them into child soldiers and sex salves, have been camped in CongoÂ?s Orientale and Haut Eule provinces, densely populated and heavily forested areas in north-eastern DR Congo.
ICRCÂ?s Mwehu said the rebel group LRA, which has kidnapped scores of children, is still a threat to the children.
"Some of the places like in Haut Uele district remain too insecure to send these children back to join their families," said Mwehu.
LRA leader, Joseph Kony, and two others are wanted by the ICC for war crimes in northern Uganda.
The LRA started fighting the Ugandan government in 1987 but moved into the DRC in 2005 and since 2008 has staged raids across the northeast Â? reportedly raping, abducting and burning villages in retaliation for attacks by the Ugandan army.
North-eastern DR Congo is vast, remote, with a poor road network and almost non existent communication system.
The U.N. says there are still around 2 million internal refugees in camps in eastern Congo, although hundreds of thousands have been able to return home this year.
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