15 Killed in DR Congo Militia Attack

In the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where violence against civilians is on the upswing, at least 15 people were reportedly killed in a militia attack.

A fishing camp in Gobu was assaulted on Sunday, according to Charite Banza, the president of civil society in a chiefdom in the Ituri province. The attackers were militia members from the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, a paramilitary group responsible for a series of brutal ethnic atrocities.

According to Banza, at least 15 people were killed in the event on Sunday, which lasted little over two hours. Banza also mentioned that seven more people had been killed nearby a week before.

Ituri province is one of eastern DR Congo’s violence hotspots, where attacks claiming dozens of lives are common.

Pilo Mulindo, the head of the same chiefdom of Bahema Nord, said a provisional toll showed nine civilians, one soldier and four CODECO militiamen were killed in the latest attack.

Lieutenant Jules Ngongo, the army spokesman, told AFP that the CODECO militia had ‘attacked civilians in the middle of prayer on Sunday in their church in Gobu, on the shores of Lake Albert’.

Ngongo said that the military had responded to the attack and the perpetrators were being prosecuted, without giving more details.

The Lendu village is allegedly protected from the Hema, a rival ethnic group, by the CODECO militia, which has thousands of fighters.

Following ten years of peace, the war between the Hema and Lendu groups flared up again in 2017, leading to thousands of fatalities and the eviction of more than 1.5 million people. 

Numerous armed organizations afflict most of eastern DR Congo as a result of local conflicts that erupted in the 1990s and 2000s.

A CODECO strike on a camp for displaced persons in the Ituri province resulted in at least 46 deaths, with children making about half of the victims.