ITURI, DR Congo
Twelve people; one soldier and 11 mainly elderly civilians were killed in a rebel attack in DR Congo's troubled north-eastern province of Ituri, hospital sources and local authorities said on Thursday.
"We have received 11
bodies of civilian victims of a massacre in the Lopa region at Djugu. There was
also the body of one soldier," John Katabuka, director of the main
regional hospital, told AFP.
"Codeco militants
attacked the village of Tshotsho Wednesday night into Thursday morning. They
killed 11 civilians with machetes and guns -- a woman and elderly people,"
local official Gedeon Dino told AFP.
The Codeco group --
Cooperative for the Development of Congo -- is one of a swathe of rebel groups
in the violence-wracked country and local sources said their latest killing
spree came in apparent reprisal for an attack on them by the military.
"These militants attacked
peaceful citizens as they were fleeing military fire," army spokesman
Lieutenant Jules Ngongo told AFP.
The village of Tshotsho is
some 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the main Ituri province town of Bunia.
The Codeco are an notorious
ethnic militia and political-religious sect that claims to represent the
interests of the Lendu ethnic group.
The Lendu and Hema communities
have a long-standing feud that led to thousands of deaths between 1999 and 2003
before intervention by a European peacekeeping force.
Violence then resumed in 2017,
blamed on the emergence of Codeco.
The provinces of Ituri and
North Kivu were placed under a state of siege in May with local authorities
replaced by army officers and police but the violence has continued unabated. - AFP
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