Militia attacks DRC internally displaced persons camp, killing dozens News
Kudra_Abdulaziz / Pixabay
Militia attacks DRC internally displaced persons camp, killing dozens

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) military announced Monday that around 40 residents of an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in the country’s northeastern Ituri region were killed in an attack by local militia groups.

Several sources confirm that a group of men entered the Lala campsite with weapons, burning shelters and taking residents’ property. The men killed at least 13 women and 23 children according to United Nations Organizations Stabilization Mission the DRC (MONUSCO) and its media site Radio Okapi. Local leader Richard Dedha Kondo, chief of Bahema Bajere, claimed on a radio show that the militia group Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) was responsible for the attacks.

The attack comes after negotiations in Aru that resulted in a promised ceasefire from the Patriotic Resistance Force of Ituri (FRPI), the Patriotic and Integrationist Front of Congo (FPIC), CODECO and the Popular Self-Defense Movement of the Ituri (MAPI).

This is not the first attack allegedly carried out by CODECO in an IDP camp. In January CODECO allegedly attacked an IDP camp in Savo, Ituri, which housed 30,000 people. Head of MONUSCO Karna Soro condemned the attacks, calling them “crimes against humanity.”

The Internally Displaced Monitoring Centre (IDMC) found that over 20 million people have been internally displaced in the DRC between 2008 and 2022. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator has requested $2.25 billion to combat displacement in the country.

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