In the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), armed men belonging to Codeco, a community militia, attacked the Lala site for displaced persons in the province of Ituri on the night of 11th June, killing more than 40 people according to local authorities and civil society.
Local sources reported that the operation lasted two hours, with no swift intervention by the police or peacekeepers.
The militiamen stormed the site, firing shots. Panic-stricken, displaced people, including children, were caught in a vice. Some were killed by bullets or machetes. Others were burnt to death in their homes.
The assailants left the area shortly before 6 a.m., according to civil society, which deplores the inaction of the security forces, even though there is a military base and a Monusco peacekeeping base within a 5-kilometer radius.
According to researchers at the Kivu security barometer, a project run by the Congolese Studies Group (GEC), the massacre may well have been in retaliation for a series of acts of violence by militiamen from the Zaire armed group, who targeted 5 civilians from the Lendu community last weekend.
The army refers to this as an act of “sabotage” and says it was not alerted by the displaced people either before or during the attacks.