Wednesday 12 / February / 2025
Kinshasa: Armed militants in an eastern border region of the Democratic Republic of Congo killed more than 50 civilians in attacks late on Monday, officials from the region reported on Tuesday.
The head of the Djaiba cluster of villages, Jean Vianney, said CODECO militants were behind the attack.
He said they set houses full of people on fire, also attacking with guns and machetes.
"There are people injured, many burnt to death in their homes," Vianney said, putting the provisional death toll at 51 and saying he expected it to rise.
Floribert Byaruhanga, a lawmaker for the wider Djugu territory, gave a similar death toll of 52, saying it included 18 children.
Provincial army spokesman Jules Ngono said soldiers tried to help but arrived too late to avoid the carnage.
"What happened to the Djaiba group is the worst in terms of the deaths of our people, and we strongly condemn it," he told Reuters news agency by telephone.
The previous night, militants also carried out an attack on a local camp for internally displaced people before being repelled by the local UN peacekeeping force, MONUSCO.
CODECO is one of a myriad of militias fighting over land and resources in east Congo. It has frequently targeted displacement camps.
CODECO militia is a loose group of fighters from the Lendu community, accused by the UN in the past of violent attacks, often on the majority Hema community in Ituri province.
UN mission spokesman Jean-Tobie Okala said in a statement that peacekeepers had managed to protect displaced people in the camp.
"But they are limited, especially when the attackers come in large numbers, as they did last night [when attacking the nearby villages]," Okala added.
Ituri, in the far east of the vast DRC, is thousands of kilometres from the capital Kinshasa.
The country has been plagued by various conflicts, insurgencies and internal disputes for more than 30 years, not least in the east. More than 7 million people are thought to have been internally displaced in the country.
Ituri is also situated just to the north of the provinces of North and South Kivu, the site of fierce fighting between Rwanda-backed M23 fighters and the Congolese army of late.
The M23 has seized large chunks of territory in the mineral-rich east of the DRC since taking up arms in late 2021, with an uptick in fighting recently.
Three days after a summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where African leaders appealed for a plan for an "unconditional" ceasefire in the region to be completed by Thursday, renewed fighting was reported by local sources on Tuesday.
