More than 40 people were killed on Friday in new attacks on villages attributed to a community militia in Ituri, a province in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo where the dead are counted by the dozen almost every week, we learned. from local sources.
The Codeco militia (Cooperative for the Development of Congo) is accused of these killings which occurred in at least three villages in the territory of Djugu, about sixty km north of the provincial capital Bunia.
“
Every day there are deaths, deaths, we are tired
”
Robert Basiloko, President of Civil Society
The Codeco is a militia of several thousand men which claims to protect the Lendu tribe against a rival tribe, the Hema, defended by another militia, the "
Zaire
".
"
In Kilo State we found 36 bodies, in Matete 8 and in Itendey I don't have a figure yet
," Innocent Matukadala, head of the sector (administrative entity) of Banyali Kilo, told AFP.
According to him, the Codeco militiamen attacked from 5:00 am and the army intervened three hours later.
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Robert Basiloko, president of the civil society of the same sector, indicates for his part that 35 people were killed in Kilo State - 5 children, 13 women and 17 men - and 8 in Matete.
“
We have provisionally 43 bodies for the single day of this Friday in the Banyali Kilo sector
,” he lamented.
"
Every day there are deaths, deaths, we are tired,
" he said, adding that other people were missing, shops were looted and houses burned.
According to certain security sources in the region, these new killings could have been committed in retaliation for an attack by the Zaire militia against three Codeco leaders, killed three days ago.
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In his latest quarterly report, published on March 27, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres estimated that 485 civilians had been killed between December 1 and March 14 in Ituri, a province plagued by violence from several armed groups, including the Codeco.
After a decade of lull, the deadly conflict in the gold-rich province between Hema and Lendu resumed at the end of 2017, causing more than 1.5 million people to flee.
In five years, several thousand civilians have been killed.
The south of Ituri, as well as the north of the neighboring province of North Kivu, is also the victim of repeated attacks attributed to the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces), an armed group of Ugandan origin presented by the jihadist group Islamic State as its branch in Central Africa.
