DAKAR, Senegal (AP) – Thousands of children have been subjected to rape and sexual violence in conflict-battered eastern Congo over the course of two months, the UN children’s agency said Friday, warning that existing funding gaps meant that hundreds of thousands were deprived of protection.

Children make up between 35 to 45 percent of the nearly 10,000 cases of rape and sexual violence reported January and February this year, James Elder, the spokesperson for UNICEF told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

“In short, based on initial data...a child was raped every half an hour,” Mr. Elder said.

He added that UNICEF faced significant funding gaps, which threatened care for hundreds of thousands of children.

“If UNICEF is unable to fill the funding gap left after programs were terminated for key humanitarian services, 250,000 children will miss out on vital services for gender-based violence and protection in armed conflict,” he added. “We have 12 weeks.”

The decades-long conflict in the central African nation of Congo escalated in January, when the M23 rebels advanced and seized the strategic eastern Congolese city of Goma, followed by the town of Bukavu in February. The fighting has killed some 3,000 people and raised fears of a wider regional war.

Sexual violence in Congo is used as “a weapon of war and a deliberate tactic of terror,” Mr. Elder said on Thursday. “We are not talking about isolated incidents; we are talking about a systemic crisis.”

The warning came as Congo’s government and Rwanda-backed rebels were meeting in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar for much-anticipated talks in a renewed push for peace in the conflict-battered eastern Congo, where the insurgents have seized vast territory.

M23 is one of about 100 armed groups that have been vying for a foothold in mineral-rich eastern Congo near the border with Rwanda, in a conflict that has created one of the world’s most significant humanitarian crises. More than 7 million people have been displaced.

The rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to UN experts, and at times have vowed to march as far as Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, about 1,000 miles to the east.