The United Nations Security Council ordered the deployment of an additional 3,000 international peacekeepers to Congo on Thursday to protect the lives of more than a quarter of a million civilians displaced by the latest escalation in Africa’s bloodiest war.

The reinforcements, yet to be identified and unlikely to be on the ground for several months, would bring the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission to 20,000. The European Union was, meanwhile, considering deploying a separate force in the area of Goma, where the UN is headquartered, to protect humanitarian aid supplies.