Seventeen people died Friday during a militia attack on a village in northeastern DR Congo, a local civil society head announced, Channels TV reported.
Gunmen from the feared CODECO militia stormed Mbidjo in Ituri province’s Djugu territory during the morning, said Jules Uwechi, chairman of the village’s civil society group.
“They opened fire, set houses ablaze and pillaged the property of villagers… I myself narrowly escaped,” Uwechi said in the provincial capital Bunia.
“When we went back we found 17 people had been killed — seven women, eight men, and two children.”
Eleven of the bodies had been buried in a mass grave.
The army and the territory’s administrator said by early evening they were not in a position to confirm the death toll.
RHM/PR