At least nineteen people have been killed in days of clashes between militias in the Eastern Highlands region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to experts and a local official.
The fighting between rival militias left
"19 dead, including two civilians and 17 combatants,"
experts in this region of South Kivu province told AFP.
The region is the scene of a conflict between Congolese Tutsis of distant Rwandan origins, the Banyamulenge, and other communities (Bafuliro, Babembe, Banyiundu ...).
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"There has been heavy fighting since Monday"
between the Banyamulenge militias and those of other communities, a local official said on condition of anonymity.
"We counted at least 30 corpses,"
he added.
According to experts,
"14 of the fighters (killed) are those of Makanika"
, a colonel who deserted the army to take the head of a militia of the Banyamulenge community, the Ngumino.
Present in the area, the United Nations Mission in Congo (Monusco) told AFP that it had no results immediately.
If the results were confirmed, it would be one of the most significant outbreaks of violence since the resumption of the conflict in early 2019.
A total of 128 people were killed between February 2019 and June 2020, the United Nations Joint Office for Human Rights (UNJHRO) said in August.
The conflict has displaced more than 110,000 people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), figures impossible to verify.
Since the end of September, this conflict has taken on a political dimension with the attempt to definitively grant the locality of Minembwe the status of a fully-fledged commune, headed by its bourgmestre from the Banyamulenge community.
This decision finally canceled by the President of the Republic Félix Tshisekedi, was denounced by opponents and many Congolese.
They saw it as an attack on the unity and territorial integrity of the DRC, denouncing an attempt at "balkanization" of the east of the country.
Further north, in Ituri province, three militiamen were killed Thursday in clashes with soldiers in the village of Mbogu located 10 km from the town of Bunia, the provincial capital, said a spokesman for the. army.
These militiamen, members of one of the branches of the armed group Cooperative for the Development of Congo (Codeco) were accused of the theft of a hundred cows.
