46 Dead In East DR Congo Attack, Including Children

Security experts and a local community leader reported Monday that a militia attack on a camp for internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in at least 46 deaths, half of them youngsters.

According to Richard Dheda, a representative of the local government for Bahema Badjere in Djugu territory, the northeastern Ituri province camp was attacked overnight from Sunday to Monday by a militia group involved in several ethnic massacres in the region.

“At least 46” people were killed in the Lala camp, according to the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a network of observers based in the volatile east of the DRC.

A prominent member of the neighborhood named Desire Malodra provided the same 46 fatalities, adding that 23 of them were children.

As “the search continues” for casualties, he further stated that the death toll was still preliminary.

Dheda had earlier reported 41 victims, while a military source had reported at least 22 fatalities.

The Lendu community is said to be protected from the Hema and the DR Congo army by the CODECO militia, or Cooperative for the Development of the Congo.

According to Malodra, “They started firing shots, many people were burned to death in their homes, and other people were killed by machete.”

A UN peacekeeper base at Bule is located five kilometers (three miles) away from the Lala camp for displaced people.

One of the most violent regions in eastern DR Congo is the province of Ituri, where attacks frequently result in the deaths of many people.

Late on Saturday night, CODECO militiamen attacked an army position in the Mahagi district of the Ituri province, killing seven civilians in the process.

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 much of eastern DR Congo as a result of local conflicts that erupted in the 1990s and 2000s.