BUNIA, DR Congo — At least 40 people were killed when
machete-wielding militiamen attacked a site for displaced people in strife-torn
eastern
DR Congo, a monitoring group and local sources said Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
"At least 40 civilians were killed with edged weapons
last night in Plaine Savo" in Djugu territory, the US-based Kivu Security
Tracker (KST) said on Twitter.
Local officials and civil society sources put the toll at
more than 50 dead, while the army's spokesman in Ituri province, Lt. Jules
Ngongo, gave provisional figures of 21 dead.
The KST said the suspected attackers were from a notorious
armed group called CODECO, blamed for a string of ethnic massacres in the area.
The Djugu area, bordering Lake Albert and
Uganda which lie
to the east, is the theatre for a bloody, long-running feud between the Lendu
and Hema communities.
Fighting between the two groups flared between 1999 and
2003, claiming tens of thousands of lives before being quelled by a European
Union peacekeeping force, Artemis.
Violence then resumed in 2017, blamed on the emergence of
CODECO — the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) — which
claims to defend the Lendu.
Since then, CODECO attacks have caused hundreds of deaths
and prompted more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes, while half of
the region's population faces food insecurity, says the Danish Refugee Council.
Attacks on camps for displaced people over an eight-day
period in November-December left 123 dead, according to the KST.
Machetes
Jean Richard Dhedda Lenga, the senior administrator in
Bahema Badjere district, said CODECO raiders attacked the site "at around
9pm, 10pm" on Tuesday.
"We have a provisional total of 59 dead ... and around
40 wounded," he told AFP by phone.
"I have just left the area — young people are looking
for other bodies in huts and in the bush."
Desire Malo Dra, a representative of civil society groups in
Bahema Badjere, said most of the casualties were women and children.
"I have counted 53 bodies, others are coming in, they
are all being gathered here where I am," he said.
"The militiamen came armed with machetes. Many victims
had their throats cut," he said.
He added the assailants "carried out their work
calmly", and the army arrived hours later, on Wednesday morning.
Ituri and neighboring North Kivu province were placed last
year under a "state of siege", a measure giving exceptional powers to
the army and police.
In addition to attacks by CODECO, the region is struggling
to stem the Allied Democratic Forces, the most brutal of an estimated 122 armed
groups that roam eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Read more Region and World
.jpg)
.jpg)
