They “tied them up, stripped them” and then killed them. Some victims were “shot”, others had their throats “cut”
Fifteen people were killed yesterday Saturday by paramilitaries in Ituri, the second attack against civilians in less than a week in the north-eastern province of DR Congo, converging sources in the region said yesterday Sunday.
And this time, local residents and officials accused the paramilitaries of the organization CODECO (s.s. Coopérative pour le développement du Congo, “Cooperative for the Development of the Congo”), which claims to defend the Lendu tribe, in conflict with the Hema tribe.
The victims, according to AFP sources, belonged to the latter community.
On Saturday evening, members of CODECO “laid an ambush on users of the Katoto-Larzi road, at the level of the village of Tali, where they captured 15 people, among them a woman,” said Gilles Tsumba, a civil society actor in Jugou district, where the attack took place.
They “tied them up, stripped them” and then killed them. Some victims were “shot”, others had their throats “cut”, explained Mr Tsumba.
According to a humanitarian organization worker, “the corpses bore signs of torture.”
The attack was perpetrated “while we have had peace for months”, said the head of the local government in the region, Rufen Mapela, confirming the death toll of 15.
“We thought this would stop and this is what happened,” Mr Tsumba said in despair, recalling that last year the authorities signed a peace agreement with various armed groups, including CODECO, after negotiations in Nairobi.
“We ask the government to speed up the peace process,” especially through a disarmament and social reintegration program for paramilitaries, he added.
Last Tuesday, alleged members of CODECO killed seven gold miners in two mines in the same area, Dzugu.
Fighting between paramilitary tribal groups had claimed thousands of lives between 1999 and 2003, until the intervention of a European force, the so-called Operation Artemis, under French command.
But the war resumed in late 2017, again claiming the lives of thousands of civilians and displacing populations en masse.
Various armed groups, some of which are supported by neighboring states, have been ravaging the eastern part of DR Congo for three decades, an area with subsoil especially rich in gold.
Source :Skai
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