India, April 9 -- Some 41,000 refugees have crossed from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into Uganda since January, many of them having witnessed killings, "sexual violence and other traumatic experience during their flight," said the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday.

Every day since the end of last month, around 600 Congolese have been crossing the border into Uganda - which hosts the largest number of refugees in Africa - bringing the total sheltering there to nearly 600,000, out of a total of 1.8 million.

Many of the new arrivals - mostly women and children - come by foot or local transport, while there have been "increasing reports of men traveling separately from their families to avoid being forcibly recruited by ar...