Killings in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo committed by three rebel groups may constitute crimes against humanity, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said. 
 
 Pillay’s office and the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Congo have documented more than 45 attacks on 30 villages in North Kivu province’s Masisi territory since May, the agencies said yesterday in a joint statement from Geneva. 
 
 “Allegations of hundreds of killings are still being verified,” Pillay said, according to the statement posted on the website of her office. “The sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension. In some cases, the attacks against civilians may constitute crimes against humanity.” 
 
 Congo is struggling to control worsening violence in its eastern provinces since hundreds of soldiers deserted the army and created a rebel group known as M23 in April. Battles between the M23 and the army have created a “security vacuum” throughout the region, allowing other rebel groups to flourish, according to the statement. 
 
 Rwandan ethnic-Hutu rebels known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, were responsible for several of the Masisi attacks, according to the statement. Raia Mutomboki, a group that says it is protecting Congolese from the FDLR, committed other atrocities, the UN said. A third armed group, Nyatura, occasionally helped the FDLR, it said. 
 
 The insecurity in eastern Congo has displaced about half a million people, according to the UN. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Michael J. Kavanagh in Kinshasa at mkavanagh9@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net 

 GENEVA (Reuters) - Rival armed groups may have killed hundreds of civilians in massacres and other "incomprehensibly vicious" attacks in eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), senior U.N. officials said on Wednesday. 
 
 The violence is focused in North Kivu near the border with Rwanda where warring groups have targeted villages seen as supporting their opponents, while the national army has been diverted to fight a movement of mutineers known as M23. 
 
 "The deterioration of the overall security situation in North Kivu following the M23 mutiny and related ruthless attacks against civilians is extremely alarming," said Roger Meece, special representative of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. 
 
 Meece was cited in a United Nations report issued in Geneva as saying a new round of systematic killings of villagers appeared to have occurred in early August. 
 
 U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said allegations of hundreds of killings were still being verified, but preliminary investigations suggested that a large number of people, mainly women and children, had been slaughtered. 
 
 "The sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension," she said. 
 
 The Congo government in Kinshasa this month rejected calls by other countries in the region for an exclusively African force to tackle the insurgency in the east. 
 
 Congo says some of the insurgent groups have support from countries such as Rwanda and Uganda - a charge both governments deny - and wants an expansion of the 17,000-member U.N. peacekeeping force in the vast, mineral-rich state. 
 
 Pillay's office in Geneva said its mission in Congo had recorded 45 attacks on 30 North Kivu villages since May by a group dubbing itself "Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda" or FDLR, and another called Raia Mutumboki. 
 
 The FDLR is largely composed of ethnic Hutus, many of whom fled into the Congo after the defeat of a Hutu government widely viewed as responsible for the massacre of up to a million Tutsis and opponents of its policies in Rwanda in 1994. 
 
 The movement sometimes stages attacks in alliance with another armed group, Nyatura, the United Nations says. 
 
 Raia Mutumboki, largely composed of Congolese Tutsis but reinforced by others from Rwanda, according to the Congo government, says it is protecting the local population by attacking Hutus, whom it regards as foreigners. 
 
 The U.N. force, known as MONUSCO, focuses on protecting civilians but has been forced to divert resources to tackle the fallout from fighting between the Congolese army and M23. 
 
 That conflict has displaced nearly half a million people since the mutiny in April led to the formation of the rebel group that accuses Kinshasa of violating a 2009 peace accord. 
 
 (Reported by Robert Evans; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
– Hundreds of civilians, most of them women and children, appear to have been massacred by rival armed factions in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay revealed today. While Pillay said that reports were still being verified, she added that "the sheer viciousness of these murders is beyond comprehension," and may constitute war crimes, Bloomberg reports. The killings have taken place mostly in the North Kivu region near the Rwandan border, Reuters reports. Insurgent groups there have been battling each other with little interference from the national army, which is busy battling the mutinous M23 faction. Pillay said her office had recorded 45 attacks on 30 villages committed either by the Hutu-dominated Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and their allies the Nyatura, or their Tutsi rivals, the Raia Mutumboki. The Congo has rejected calls for an African intervention force.