Militias in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have killed at least 15 people in three separate attacks, local officials said on Thursday, in the latest violence to hit the turbulent region.
Fighters from the CODECO militia attacked the village of Drodro, in Ituri province’s Djugu territory on Wednesday, according to local civil-society figure Charite Banza.
Six people were hacked to death by machete, he told AFP, adding that the CODECO also killed three people in a village about 30 kilometres (18 miles) away on Thursday.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia also carried out an attack on Thursday, in Ituri, in which six civilians were killed according to an aid worker who requested anonymity.
AFP was unable to independently verify the details of the two attacks.
The CODECO is a militia that claims to protect the Lendu community from another ethnic group, the Hema, and the army
The ADF, for its part, is a militia aligned to the Islamic State group and is accused of slaughtering thousands of civilians.
Eastern Congo is plagued by dozens of armed groups, many of which are a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
Ituri province is one of the violence hotspots, where attacks claiming dozens of lives are routine.
‘It’s too much, there’s been too much blood, too much suffering,’ said Karna Soro, the head of the Ituri office of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC.
Over 300 people have been killed in the province since December, he added, including 60 children.
Source : NEWAGE