No less than 14 people including children, were killed in an overnight rebels attack on Tuesday at a refugee camp in the eastern town of Ituri Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s, according to army spokesman Jules Ngongo Tsikudi.
According to Tsikudi, the attack was cartied out by rebels of the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO), a political-religious sect that claims to represent the interests of the Lendu ethnic group.
“The rebels raided a site outside the eastern town of Fataki where hundreds of civilians have sought refuge in recent months, killing 14 people including children,” Tsikudi said in a statement.
A civil society leader, Dieudonne Lossa, however, gave a different death toll of 15 and also accused the CODECO of staging another attack on a nearby artisanal mining site on Sunday that killed at least 35..
According to Lossa, the CODECCO, a deadly rebel group operating in the fringes of the country, is one of several armed militias wrangling over land and resources in Congo’s mineral-rich east, a conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced millions over the past decade.
Congo’s government last year declared martial law in Ituri and neighboring North Kivu province in an effort to quell the violence but deadly raids have surged since then.
The provinces are plagued by a growing number of attacks from various militias, including CODECO and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which ISIL describes as its local affiliate.
About 2,500 civilians were killed between May 2021 and April 2022, according to Amnesty International.
CODECO is renowned for targeting civilians, and only last month, killed 18 people at a church and another 60 at a displaced persons camp in February.
Jules Tsuba, president of an association of civil society groups in Djugu, said most of the victims in Tuesday’s attack were children and stressed that the death toll was provisional.
“It’s shocking to see children chopped up by machetes,” he told a news agency.