DHAKA: The head of the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Martin Kobler, on Thursday urged armed groups to free their child soldiers, calling their recruitment ‘an atrocity’.

‘Almost 1,000 children have been... recruited by armed groups between January 1, 2012 and August 31, 2013. The children were aged from six to 17 years old,’ Kobler told a weekly conference of the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUSCO.

‘Concrete measures must be taken to protect children from this fate and I invite all the armed groups to free all children from their ranks,’ he said, reports The Straits Times.

‘One thousand child soldiers is an atrocity, one child soldier a tragedy.’

BDST: 2048 HRS, OCT 24, 2013
RoR/JCK