Seventeen hostages were murdered on Sunday (March 26th) in the Democratic Republic of Congo by the community militia Codeco (Cooperative for the Development of Congo), report several local sources.

On Saturday, at least "seventeen people had been taken hostage by Codeco militiamen between the villages of Bambu and Kobu", in the territory of Djugu, about 45 km north of Bunia (Ituri province), told AFP Banguneni Gbalande, leader of the Akongo-Nyali community where the facts took place.

They were in two vehicles travelling from Bunia, the provincial capital, to the mining town of Mongbwalu when their convoy was ambushed, he said.

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On Sunday, these hostages were "executed in Pechi village, a stronghold of Codeco", he said, indicating that he had been "alerted by the families of some victims of Mongbwalu".

The "hostages died, they were executed by Codeco militiamen," Toko Kagbanese, another local traditional leader, told AFP.

A resident of Bambu told AFP that the hostage-taking took place after three Codeco militiamen were ambushed by a rival militia in the locality. A pregnant woman was among the hostages, said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.

A deadly conflict in Ituri

Since the end of 2022, dozens of people have died almost every week in Ituri, a province rich in gold.

More than thirty people, including many women and children, were massacred on 18 March in several villages. Codeco militiamen were accused of the killing.

Codeco is a militia of several thousand men who claim to protect the Lendu tribe against a rival tribe, the Hema, defended by another militia, the "Zaire".

After a decade of calm, the deadly conflict in Ituri between Hema and Lendu resumed in late 2017, causing more than one and a half million people to flee and thousands of civilians to die. The previous conflict between communal militias had caused thousands of deaths between 1999 and 2003, until the intervention of a European force, Operation Artemis, under French command.

With AFP

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