BUNIA, DR Congo, June 12, 2023 (BSS/AFP) - At least 46 people, half of them
children, were killed in a militia attack on a camp for displaced people in
the Democratic Republic of Congo, security analysts and a local community
leader said Monday.

A militia group involved in numerous ethnic killings in the area attacked the
camp in northeastern Ituri province overnight Sunday to Monday, Richard
Dheda, an official of the local administration for Bahema Badjere in Djugu
territory, told AFP.

The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a network of observers based in DRC's
restive east, counted "at least 46" dead in the Lala camp.

A community leader Desire Malodra gave the same death toll of 46, adding that
23 of them were children.

He added that the toll was still provisional as "the search continues" for
victims.

Earlier, Dheda said there had been 41 victims, while a military source said
at least 22 had been killed.

The CODECO militia, or Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, claims
to protect the Lendu community from another ethnic group, the Hema, as well
as the DR Congo army.

"They began to fire shots, many people were burned to death in their homes,
others were killed by machete," Malodra said.

The Lala camp for displaced people is five kilometres (three miles) from
Bule, the site of a UN peacekeeper base.

Ituri province is one of eastern DR Congo's violence hotspots, where attacks
claiming dozens of lives are common.

CODECO militiamen attacked an army position in the Djukoth area of Ituri
province's Mahagi territory late on Saturday, killing seven civilians.

After a decade of calm, the conflict between the Hema and Lendu communities
rekindled in 2017, resulting in thousands of deaths and forcing more than 1.5
million people from their homes.

Much of eastern DR Congo is plagued by dozens of armed groups, a legacy of
regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.