Authorities slapped a dawn-to-dusk curfew on two northeast Congo towns on August 18, 2016, following deadly clashes over the government’s failure to prevent repeated civilian massacres. The slaying in which victims were the latest in a string of massacres that has left more than 700 dead since 2014. / AFP / KUDRA MALIRO (Photo credit should read KUDRA MALIRO/AFP via Getty Images)
58 people have been killed in Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the province’s interior minister said on Thursday.
According to minster Adjio Gidi, 23 people were killed in Irumu territory in southern Ituri on Tuesday, followed by another 35 in the same region on Thursday.
“Large numbers of the population” have fled their homes, he told AFP.
Gidi blames the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which originated from western Uganda in the 1990s as a Ugandan Muslim rebel group.
“It was ADF, fleeing military pressure in (neighboring) North Kivu province, namely in the Beni region,” Gidi said.
“Our forces are already in the area and are in contact with the enemy,” he said.
The latest attacks occurred in a heavily forested area called Tshabi.
A member of the Nyali community in Tshabi told AFP that, “People were killed with every sort of weapon, knives and guns.”
“Right now, the Congolese army, supported by local people, are still looking for victims in the forest,” he said.
“Seventeen people are listed as disappeared, but they have almost definitely been kidnapped,” he added.
The ADF is one of more than 100 armed groups that trouble the eastern provinces of DR Congo.
The group, for more than three decades, have killed more than 1,000 civilians since the start of 2019, according to U.N. figures.
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