Militias operating in Ituri province in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have killed, according to local civil society sources, at least a hundred civilians in less than a month.
Four main armed groups are active in the region: the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the Front for the Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FRPI), the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO) and the Patriotic and Integrationist Force of Congo (FPIC).
Their activity caused the Congolese government to declare a state of emergency in May 2021, still in force, in an attempt to contain a violent armed conflict. It should be recalled that the United Nations held the ADF responsible for the execution of at least 1,200 civilians that year.
According to the report presented Thursday by civil society groups in the province, and picked up by Radio Okapi, the state of siege has not achieved its goal and has ended up turning the region into a bubble of fighting and assaults that have cost, only between January 6 and 10, the lives of 34 civilians and thousands of displaced people.
The president of civil society in Ituri, Dieudonné Lossa, has asked the government to convene «urgently» a dialogue table for the lifting of the state of emergency.
On the other hand, the military governorate of Ituri assures that the security situation «has significantly improved». According to its version, several populations have returned to the control of the Armed Forces of the DRC and many displaced persons have returned to their localities, particularly on the Komanda-Bunia axis, one of the former hot spots of the conflict.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
