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Fighting kills at least 50 eastern DR Congo: governor
KINSHASA, June 13, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – At least 50 people have been killed in
violence in Ituri, a volatile province of eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), governor Jean Bamanisa Saidi said Thursday.
“As of the day before yesterday, we had a figure of some 50 (dead), but
it’s true, we are aware that there are other cases,” he told AFP.
Other sources said the toll could be 60 or more than 70.
The fighting began last Friday and escalated on Monday, affecting the
territory of Djugu north of the provincial capital of Bunia, and causing many
people to flee their homes, the sources said.
The cause of the flareup was not immediately clear, but it occurred in a
region where tens of thousands died in clashes between the Hema and Lendu
ethnic groups between 1999 and 2003.
The deputy head of the UN peacekeeping force in the DRC, General Bernard
Commins, told a press conference on Wednesday that the two communities had
suffered fresh violence.
A Hema leader, Pilo Molondro, told AFP that 49 deaths had been recorded
since the start of the week, and “all communities are in mourning.”
A head of the Lendu community, Joel Mande, said: “We have recorded 40
deaths since Monday, after a trader and his colleagues were killed. The toll
could reach 60.”
But an NGO source said that from Saturday to Tuesday alone, “more than 72
people were killed in around 10 localities in Djugu and Irumu.”
Okapi, the radio station run by the UN’s MONUSCO, said 38 people had been
stabbed to death just in the village of Tche.
Ituri and the neighbouring province of North Kivu on the DRC’s eastern
border are struggling to roll back an epidemic of Ebola that has claimed more
than 1,400 lives since August 1.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1952 hrs