More than 50 civilians were killed when machete-wielding militiamen attacked a site for displaced people in strife-torn eastern DR Congo, sources said.
Fifty-two people, some of them children, were killed, a source with the UN’s peacekeeping mission MONUSCO said, adding that 36 were wounded. The Congolese government, which spoke of a “crime against humanity”, also said “about 50” people had died.
Local officials and civil society sources put the toll at more than 50 dead, while a respected monitor, the US-based Kivu Security Tracker (KST), said “at least” 40 were killed.
The army’s spokesman in Ituri province, Lieutenant Jules Ngongo, gave provisional figures of 21 dead.
“The massacre of defenceless civilians is a crime against humanity,” he said.
The KST said the suspected attackers, carrying “edged weapons”, were from a notorious armed group called CODECO, blamed for a string of ethnic massacres in the area.
The communication ministry said in a tweet that…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
