UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno asked to brief the council amid fears of a new explosion of violence following the massacre of around 160 refugees from the DRC in neighbouring Burundi last week.
"We are concerned about public statements by leading officials and military personnel in the area about a possible intention to retaliate," UN spokesperson Fred Eckhard said.
"We have put our people on alert. We have limited means, of course, but we have deployed additional troops to the border area," he told a news conference in New York.
Eckhard said Guehenno had given a telephone briefing Tuesday evening to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who earlier this week asked the council to more than double the size of the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC.
He said the United Nations was "taking all possible pre-emptive measures to avert a potential crisis."
Responsibility for last week's killings at Gatumba camp in Burundi, just across the border from the DRC, has been claimed by the last active Hutu rebel group in Burundi, the National Liberation Forces.
But authorities in the region, as well as survivors, say DRC forces and Rwandan extremist Hutu militias took part. Most of the victims were rival ethnic Tutsis.
Rwanda and Burundi, both on the border of the vast DRC, have threatened retaliation over the massacre. – Sapa-AFP.
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