The vehicle, laden with crude copper from a nearby quarry, was stopped at a checkpoint at Kolwezi in the mining province of Katanga, Christian Busindi, the local mayor, told AFP.

The copper was the property of a Chinese company, Hua-Shin Mining, which declined to comment when contacted.

The consignment was seized and sealed in a mining depot at Kolwezi, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of the provincial capital of Lubumbashi.

The truck crew were questioned and held pending a hearing before local magistrates in the next few days, said Busindi.

The copperbelt straddling Katanga and northern Zambia also includes cobalt and uranium extracted from copper deposits.

Uranium mining is banned in the DRC, where all ore for export must conform to authorised safety standards including strict controls on radioactivity, the Katanga province mining ministry said.

In October 2007, DRC authorities seized 19 tonnes of highly radioactive ore in an area south of Kolwezi.

But transporters managed later to dump some of the impounded ore in a nearby river, and more than 15 tonnes disappeared, local authorities said.

The river's water was declared unfit for human consumption and seven people including anti-fraud agents were arrested. But the missing ore was never recovered.

Congo uranium, used in the manufacture of the Hiroshima bomb in 1945, has not been mined since the closure of Shinkolobwe in 1960, although local do-it-yourself miners have since worked the site unofficially.

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