Eight farmers were killed this Sunday, April 30 in an attack attributed to a community militia in three villages in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, we learned from a local official.
Around 5 a.m. (local time), militiamen from the Codeco (Cooperative for the Development of Congo) group attacked the villages of Duvire, Njalo and Bengi, Adubango Kivia, head of the Sumbuso group in Djugu territory, told AFP. , in the province of Ituri.
Shot dead
“We found eight bodies including a woman.
They are farmers.
They were shot and then cut with a machete,” said the chef de groupement (set of villages).
According to Adubango Kivia, the militiamen “operated calmly” because in the Sumbuso groupement, “there are no soldiers”.
He pleaded for "the deployment of the FARDC (Congolese Armed Forces) to secure the population and put an end to the massacres" in his entity, located about a hundred kilometers north of Bunia, capital of the province of Ituri.
The militiamen also "burnt down a hundred houses and looted cattle and farm products", he added.
Thousands of civilian victims of militias
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".
The last major attack attributed to the Codeco group in the territory of Djugu dates back to April 14, with more than 40 dead.
After a decade of calm in Ituri, a province rich in gold, the deadly conflict between the Hema and the Lendu resumed at the end of 2017, causing the flight of more than a million and a half people.
In five years, several thousand civilians have been killed in this region of the DRC.
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 State Islamic as its branch in Central Africa.
