BUNIA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: The death toll from an attack in a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province rose to 25 on Sunday, a local chief and civil society leader said, after a government spokesman and a U.N. document confirmed the attack on Saturday.
The Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) group, one of many militias operating in the conflict-ridden east, carried out the killings in the village of Galayi, 70 km (45 miles) northwest of the city of Bunia, they said.
Fifteen bodies were discovered on Sunday, in addition to 10 bodies recovered on Saturday, Banzala Danny, a local chief, and Vital Tungulo, a civil society leader, told Reuters.
An internal U.N. document seen by Reuters, and Jules Ngongo, spokesperson for the governor of Ituri province, both confirmed the attack and the initial death toll of 10 civilians.
“We assure that all the killers will be punished by justice,” Ngongo said.
The human rights situation in Ituri has deteriorated since the beginning of the year as CODECO carries out more attacks, the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) said in a report published in March.
CODECO and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), another militia group, are responsible for most civilian killings in eastern DRC, according to a report by the U.N. peacekeeping mission released in March.
(REUTERS)
Also See:
In a career spanning three decades and counting, Ramananda (Ram to his friends) has been the foreign editor of The Telegraph, Outlook Magazine and the New Indian Express. He helped set up rediff.com’s editorial operations in San Jose and New York, helmed sify.com, and was the founder editor of India.com.
His work has featured in national and international publications like the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Global Times and Ashahi Shimbun. But his one constant over all these years, he says, has been the attempt to understand rising India’s place in the world.
He can rustle up a mean salad, his oil-less pepper chicken is to die for, and all it takes is some beer and rhythm and blues to rock his soul.
Talk to him about foreign and strategic affairs, media, South Asia, China, and of course India.
