The forgotten child soldiers of the DRC

Read the entire piece about DRC's child soldiers

Serge was at school when a group arrived, firing shots in the air and setting fire to the building. 'I was afraid but I had to go.' He was taken to an army base in Bunia, in the largest town in the Ituri region of the country, where he was put to work on a roadblock.

Serge was then eight. 'I remember holding a gun and shooting,' he said, dropping his voice. 'When it stopped all I could see was bodies on the ground. I knew it must be me who had killed them.' Racked by guilt and missing home Serge cried all the time. He desperately wanted to leave but did not know how.

'They made me kill.' Emmanuele looked at the ground as he fumbled with the tassels on his coat. 'If I refused to go to the front line they beat me. They treated me like an animal.'

Emmanuele was 15 when he joined a rebel army group in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The decision was his own. 'I had no money and they said they would give me some,' he said.

And as well as driving millions of people into ever deeper poverty and turning children into killers, the battle has led to girls being seized to become 'wives' for male combatants.

Furaa became a wife after joining an armed group. She was no older than 11. 'It was the first time I knew a man,' she said, adding that she also learnt to fight: 'As I was a sub-officer when they gave me orders to go in front as a soldier, I couldn't ignore them. In one battle they shot me. I found the people in the army group very bad.'

Furaa was eventually sent to a Unicef transit camp in Goma where she is waiting to return to her community. Reintegrating the children into normal life is difficult. Some people find it hard to accept the return of a girl who has been raped.

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It is hard to comprehend, but these are real kids with middle names and dreams and games they liked to play.