DR Congo: At Least 46 Killed in Attack on Displaced People's Camp

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Facts

  • Local sources in Ituri province's Djugu territory, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have reported that at least 46 people, half of them children, have been killed in a bloody attack carried out overnight on Sunday in the Lala camp for displaced people.1
  • Officials have blamed the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) militia — which claims to protect the Lendu ethnic community from the DRC army and the Hema ethnic group — for this assault just three miles (5 km) away from the UN peacekeeper base in Bule.2
  • The UN peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) stated that CODECO militiamen killed people, including women and children, with guns and machetes. At least 12 people were burned alive after their shelters were set on fire.3
  • This is the third such massacre to be attributed to CODECO over the past three months, with two major attacks in April and May killing at least 80 people in the gold-rich province of Ituri.4
  • The number of internally displaced people (IDP) in the province stood at 1.5M by the start of the year, with some 70K displaced people reportedly arriving in Bule between April 15 and May 15 due to armed violence in the surrounding areas.5
  • Ituri is one of the conflict-ridden eastern DRC's violence hotspots, where deadly attacks have been common since the conflict between the Hema and Lendu communities reignited in 2017.6

Sources: 1France 24, 2The New Arab, 3Reuters, 4The East African, 5Al Jazeera, and 6TRT Afrika.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Al Jazeera. The CODECO rebel attacks have worsened the longstanding humanitarian crisis in Ituri province, which is more or less a lawless region despite the presence of UN peacekeepers. More than 120 rebel groups are escalating the violence, driving the largest population of internally displaced people on the African continent. Despite this, no plan has been outlined to bring peace to the DRC.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Militant Wire. While solving the dire situation in the eastern part of the DRC may require a lot of effort to restore governance in the region, it is clear that CODECO will not halt its operations as long as threats to the Lendu community remain unresolved and the concerns of its supporters go unaddressed. If authorities want to take a step in the right direction, they should recognize that peace will only be restored once these issues are resolved.

Predictions