The casualisation of violence and brutality is profoundly shocking, with the latest reports from the east of the country indicating that, far from a predominance of military victims, it is innocent villagers and bystanders who are being murdered in the greatest numbers, while the numbers of refugees and displaced citizens climbs daily in exponential proportions.
With the increasing likelihood of neighbouring countries being drawn into the conflict, this could turn into one of the 21st century's most terrible and enduring tragedies.
It is already, in some quarters, regarded as the "First African World War", with intermittent, largely below-the-radar conflict ongoing for many years.
According to some sources it has claimed as many as five million lives.
The centre of the conflict has been the eastern province of North Kivu, with its nearby borders of Uganda and Rwanda.
The region has been volatile since millions of refugees crossed into it in the wake of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 - which saw more than 500,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus slain.
In a 1998-2002 war, Rwanda fought Angolan troops in a bitter conflict that saw Congo riven into rival fiefdoms.
Congolese rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda occupied tracts in the east rich in coffee, gold, and tin; while Angola and Zimbabwe supplied tanks and fighter planes to the government forces in exchange for access to copper and diamond deposits in the south and west of the country.
Now Angola is threatening to involve itself again.
It claims Rwanda is supporting the Congo rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda, whose advance on the town of Goma spurred the latest outbreak in the conflict and reportedly led to the displacement of at least 250,000 people since August.
Gen Nkunda left the Congo army in 2004 and took up the cause of Tutsi refugees against the Hutu extremists said to have orchestrated the mass killing in Rwanda, many of whom are said to have remained in the Congo.
As such, he is one of a number of rebel militia leaders who have made their presence felt in the lawless east of a country the size of Western Europe and whose capital, Kinshasa, is about the same distance away as Moscow from London.
Government forces are ill-disciplined, underpaid, often leaderless and, suffering poor morale, have proved little match for Gen Nkunda's well-equipped rebels.
The result is what has been termed by agencies a "humanitarian black hole" where lawlessness and fighting have made it almost impossible for aid workers to address the rapidly evolving emergency characterised by displacement, homelessness, lack of food and water and encroaching disease.
United Nations Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate ceasefire so that such aid can be delivered to the streams of refugees cut off by the conflict.
At the same time, members of the 15-nation UN Security Council and the Congolese ambassador have reached broad agreement for adding a further 3000 peace-keeping troops to the 17,000 already in the country.
This followed a Nairobi summit during which Mr Ban had called on all armed groups in North Kivu to accede to an immediate ceasefire.
He warned that "when the laws of war are violated, personal criminal responsibility may ensue, particularly for those in positions of command and control".
It is a message that all involved must hear, and in the service of which leaders of neighbouring countries must raise their own voices - above those of self-interest.
The problems of the Congo, which shares borders with so much of central and southern Africa, are those of the continent itself.
While the rest of the world can supply aid, funds and peace-keepers in an attempt to hold back a potentially devastating human catastrophe, the reservoir of these is neither infinite nor inexhaustible.
Long-term solutions must, ultimately, come from within the region itself.
