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An official in Ituri province says CODECO rebels have attacked six children in the village of Drodro, including two women who were killed.
Armed rebels have killed at least 12 people in an attack on displaced civilians in the northeastern province of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a military spokesman said.
Fighters from the Congolese Development Cooperative (CODECO) group searched the town of Drodro on Sunday night, killing six children, four men and two women, military spokesman Jules Ngongo Ituri told Reuters news agency.
Some village groups said the death toll was higher.
CODECO attacks have killed hundreds of civilians in Djugu territory in Ituri province since 2017 and forced thousands to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.
CODECO fighters, in particular, come from the Lendu farming community in conflict with Hema shepherds.
“Their goal was to attack the displaced population of Drodron,” Ngongo said.
Caritas Catholic charity priest and coordinator Ngabu Lidja Chrysante Ituri said his colleagues on the ground saw the bodies of 35 people in the attack, which also targeted the local church.
According to the US-based Kivu Security Tracker, which maps DRC incidents of violence, 107 bodies were found in Drodro and surrounding villages.
“The vast majority of the dead are civilians,” the group said.
https://twitter.com/KivuSecurity/status/1462751372781264903?s=20
Mathias Gilman, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, said at least 16,000 people fleeing the attacks were sheltered in a place protected by peacekeepers.
CODECO spokesman Patrick Basa denied that the group had killed civilians. He told Reuters that his fighters had clashed with Drodo’s hema militia, but said civilians had fled the area.
The conflict between the Lendu and Hema communities caused 50,000 deaths between 1999 and 2007 in one of the bloodiest parts of the DRC in the eastern civil war.
The surrounding North Kivu and Ituri provinces have been under siege since May 6, an emergency measure to fight armed groups like CODECO, as well as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which has replaced the military and police with civilian authorities. .
ADF, which the United States calls a “terrorist group” one of them many armed groups operating in the mineral-rich DRC east.
In August, the group burned and killed at least 19 civilians in Beni territory in North Kivu, according to local authorities.
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