The massacres continue in Ituri, a province in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo where more than 150 civilians have been killed since the beginning of April, deplored Tuesday the Office for Humanitarian Coordination of the United Nations (OCHA).
In his last quarterly report, at the end of March, the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres estimated at 485 the number of civilians killed since the beginning of December in this province rich in gold and plagued by violence from several armed groups.
Among them are the Codeco (Cooperative for the Development of Congo) militia which claims to defend the Lendu tribe and the rival Zaire militia which claims to protect the Hema. The province is also the target of attacks by the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) affiliated with the jihadist group Islamic State.
During the first two weeks of April, OCHA-DRC noted a “persistence of attacks against civilians in three distinct territories” (Djugu, Irumu, Mambasa) where, according to humanitarian sources and local authorities, “armed attacks caused about 150 deaths.
Since the beginning of the month, the locality of Komanda in the territory of Irumu “has become the refuge of thousands of people fleeing generalized insecurity” in the chefferie (grouping of villages) of Walese Vonkutu, adds OCHA.
The UN humanitarian coordination office also reports attacks on basic infrastructure, in particular on the Rimba health center (Mahagi territory), “ransacked on April 12 by armed elements”.
“The security situation in Ituri remains very worrying because of the attacks that continue against civilians. These attacks leave the communities in great need of assistance and protection”, commented in New York Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the chief. of the UN, Antonio Guterres.
He said in particular that of the more than 150 dead since the beginning of April, more than 55 civilians had been killed and others injured in a single day on Friday in Djugu territory, citing figures from local authorities.
Assuring the will of the UN and its partners to help the populations in a province where 1.6 million people have had to flee their homes, he noted that “the distribution of aid could be delayed in the areas affected by the recent attacks”.
“The authorities must strengthen measures to protect civilians,” he pleaded.
After a decade of lull, the deadly conflict between Hema and Lendu resumed at the end of 2017, causing the flight of more than one and a half million people and the death of several thousand others.
Like the neighboring province of North Kivu, Ituri has been under a “state of siege” for almost two years, an exceptional measure which has replaced the civil administration with the police and the army but which has failed to stop the violence.
04/18/2023 22:21:39 – Kinshasa (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
