Women, children killed in new DR Congo attack

FE Team | Published: October 19, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

DR Congo, Oct 18 (AFP): Twenty-two people, most of them women and children, have been hacked and clubbed to death by Ugandan rebels in the troubled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo just days after a similar massacre.
The new attack sparked calls for UN forces to protect the vulnerable local population, as the rebels who have terrorised North Kivu for two decades resist attempts to drive them out.
The latest violence on Friday evening in the town of Eringeti left 10 women, eight children and four men dead, local government official Amisi Kalonda told AFP.
"Most of the victims were killed with machetes, axes and hoes," the non-governmental umbrella group Civil Society of North Kivu said in a statement.
Several children had their heads "bashed against the walls" it said, blaming the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces and National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU), the only remaining militia active in the region.
Kalonda, the government administrator for the area, said he was heading to Eringeti along with an army contingent.
Eringeti is about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the town of Beni, a town of half a million where 26 people were slaughtered with machetes on Thursday in an attack also blamed on the rebels.
The Ugandan rebels have committed strings of atrocities since they were chased into neighbouring Congo by the Ugandan army in the 1990s.
The Congolese army, supported by UN peacekeepers from the MONUSCO stabilisation mission had dealt the rebels a series of severe blows earlier this year.
But the fighters have begun to recover, attacking isolated villages before targeting Beni, a day's drive from the regional capital Goma. They are believed still to number around 400 fighters.
The North Kivu civil society group said at least 79 people had been "savagely executed by the ADF" in the past fortnight, calling on the UN force to contribute troops, not just logistics, to help confront the rebels.
It said its members would meet in Beni on Saturday to decide on their own steps to protect themselves.