Eight million people are in urgent need of assistance in conflict-wracked eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo with women and girls subjected to sexual violence on a massive scale, according to a senior UN official.

UN humanitarian office operations director Edem Wororu said a visit to the African country was “shocking, heart-breaking and sobering” and had deteriorated alarmingly in the last 18 months.

She described the situation in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri provinces as “frankly the worst situation we have ever seen” in a country where more than 26 million people are hungry and need food.

She told a news conference gender-based violence is “being perpetrated on a massive and distressing scale” with more than 35,000 survivors seeking access to treatment and services after attacks in just the first six months of 2023 in the three provinces.

Given that only a fraction of survivors report gender-based violence, she said, “the number is likely to be higher”.

She said the UN has only been able to help “a fraction of the number of people in need” after it has received 764 million dollars (£607 million) for humanitarian assistance this year – having appealed for 2.3 billion dollars (£1.8 billion).

Gabriella Waaijman, global humanitarian director at London-based Save the Children International who was also on the trip, said Congo has the highest number of grave violations against children and one of the highest number of displaced people in the world — and the number of internally displaced people grew by a further one million this year.

She said money is needed urgently to scale up humanitarian help and save lives, but what people really need is peace “and their government to step up and help them to return home safely or else provide them land so that they can be settled elsewhere and start anew”.

Conflict has been simmering for decades in mineral-rich eastern Congo, spiking in late 2021 when M23 – a rebel group linked to neighbouring Rwanda – resurfaced and started capturing territory.

Attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces, which is believed to have ties to the Islamic State extremist group, have also spiked along with intercommunal violence.