17 hostages executed by community militia in DRC
Kotko community militants executed 17 people abducted on Saturday in northeastern DRC on Sunday.
Kotko is a militia group of several thousand men that claims to protect the Lendu tribe against a rival tribe, the Hema, who is protected by another militia, the “Sair”.
AFP
Seventeen people who were taken hostage the previous day in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo were executed on Sunday by the social militia Kotko (Cooperative for the Development of the Congo), we learned from local sources.
On Saturday, in Tijuku territory, about 45 km north of Bunia (Iduri province), at least “seventeen people were taken hostage by Kodeko militants between Bambu and Kobu villages,” Akongo chief AFP Panguneni Kabalante said. -Nyali community where the facts happened.
lurking
He explained that the people were traveling in two vehicles from the provincial capital Bunia to the mining town of Mongpawalu when their convoy was ambushed. On Sunday, the hostages “were hanged in Bachi village, Kodeko’s stronghold,” he said, adding that he had been “warned by the families of some of the victims in Mongbavalu”.
“The hostages died, they were hanged by Kotko fighters,” another local traditional leader, Toko Kakpanese, confirmed to AFP. A resident of Babu told AFP the hostages were taken after three Kotko fighters died in an ambush by a rival militia in the area. Among the hostages was a pregnant woman, the source said, who did not want to be identified for security reasons.
Deaths every week
Since the end of 2022, dozens of deaths have been occurring almost every week in the gold-rich province of Iduri. On March 18, more than thirty people, including women and children, were massacred in several villages. Kotko militants were blamed for the murder.
Kotko is a militia group of several thousand men that claims to protect the Lendu tribe against a rival tribe, the Hema, who is protected by another militia, the “Sair”. After a decade of peace, deadly conflict in Ituri between Hema and Lendu resumed in late 2017, displacing more than one and a half million people and killing thousands of civilians.
Previous conflict between social militias had left thousands dead until the intervention of Operation Artemis, a European force under French command between 1999 and 2003.
AFP
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