ITURI, DR Congo
Twelve civilians and 38 rebels have died in four days of fighting in northeast DR Congo, where the armed forces are carrying out a crackdown on militias, military and local sources said on Monday.
The clashes have taken place in Ituri province,
where in separate conflicts, the army is battling the Allied Democratic Forces
(ADF) -- a group with suspected links to the so-called Islamic State -- and an
ethnic-based militia called CODECO.
On Thursday, nine civilians in the Mambembe
area were "massacred" by the ADF, and three more were killed in an
attack on Saturday, the area's chief, Janvier Musoki Kinyongo, told AFP.
"People have fled my area. ADF rebels are
moving about the region," he said.
In another part of Ituri, soldiers killed seven
ADF operatives and captured one in an offensive launched on Highway 4, about 90
kilometres (55 miles) south of provincial capital Bunia, army spokesman Jules
Ngongo said.
Separately, the army said it had carried out a
"helicopter-backed operation" against CODECO in Ituri's territory of
Djugi.
"Thirty-one CODECO militia elements (were)
neutralised and several were wounded, it said.
The Cooperative for the Development of the
Congo (CODECO) is a military-religious sect that claims to represent the Lendu
ethnic group, which has a historic feud with the Hema community.
Fighting between the two groups flared between
1999 and 2003, claiming tens of thousands of lives before being quelled by
a European
Union peacekeeping force, Artemis.
Violence then resumed in 2017, blamed on the
emergence of CODECO.
Since October, CODECO has stepped up attacks in
the Djugu area, bordering Lake Albert and Uganda which
lie to the east.
On Saturday, a suicide attack at a crowded nightspot in Beni, in
neighbouring North Kivu province, claimed seven lives.
North Kivu is
the epicentre of ADF attacks that, according to the Catholic Church, have
claimed some 6,000 deaths since 2013. The group has also been blamed for a
string of attacks on Ugandan soil this year.
On November 30, the DRC and Uganda launched a
joint operation against the ADF.
The ADF is historically a Ugandan rebel
coalition that established itself in eastern DRC in 1995, becoming the
deadliest of scores of outlawed forces in the troubled region.
The Islamic State group presents the ADF as its
regional branch -- the Islamic State Central Africa Province, or ISCAP. - AFP
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