At least forty-six civilians were killed in an attack on a camp for displaced people overnight from Sunday June 11 to Monday June 12 in Ituri, in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), learned Agence France-Presse (AFP) from local sources.
The Kivu Security Barometer, a network of analysts based in eastern DRC, reported “at least forty-six” deaths in the Lala IDP camp in Djugu territory, blaming the Codeco militia for committing this attack.
A local civil society leader, Désiré Malodra, put forward the same toll of forty-six dead, specifying that twenty-three were children and that this figure was provisional since, he said, “the search continues”. . Richard Dheda, official in the chiefdom of Bahema Badjere, where the attacked camp is located, had previously mentioned forty-one dead and also designated Codeco militiamen as the perpetrators of this massacre.
A military source put forward a provisional toll of at least twenty-two dead. The UN and the Congolese government had still not communicated on the subject Monday in the middle of the afternoon.
The assailants, who arrived in the middle of the night, “started firing shots, many people burned to death in their homes, others were killed with machetes,” said Désiré Malodra. The Lala site is located 5 kilometers from Bule, where there is a base of United Nations peacekeepers.
Deadly conflict since 2017
The Codeco (Cooperative for the Development of Congo) is a militia of several thousand men claiming to protect the Lendu from the Hema. An attack by this militia against an army position killed seven civilians (five children and two women) on Saturday in the neighboring territory of Mahagi, still in Ituri.
After a decade of lull, the deadly conflict in Ituri between Hema and Lendu has resumed since the end of 2017, causing the death of thousands of civilians and the flight of more than a million and a half people. The previous conflict between community militias caused thousands of deaths between 1999 and 2003, until the intervention of a European force, Operation “Artemis”, under French command.
In addition, local sources reported on Monday a new village attack attributed to the ADF, rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group, which would have killed at least eight people on Sunday evening in the neighboring province of North Kivu, in Kasindi, in the territory of Blessed.
Last Thursday, a previous attack in this same territory left twelve dead, men, women and children. According to the UN humanitarian coordination office (OCHA), more than fifty civilians were killed in May in the territory of Beni.