International Red Cross reunites 31 children with their parents

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reunited 31 children, who had been stranded in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with their parents in the west of the country. In a communiqué, ICRC said it had organised two flights on Wednesday and Thursday from the eastern town of Goma to the capital, Kinshasa, in the west. The children, aged five and 17 years, had been separated from their parents during country's five-year civil war. The ICRC reported that once the children were registered as missing, Red Cross workers were able to "search for their parents and help establish contact between them" using the ICRC's message system which spans across the country. The reunited families come from 11 different provinces across the country.