On the 31st May overnight assaults targeted camps hosting internally displaced people near the towns of Boga in Irumu territory, Ituri province, and Tchabi, North Kivu province, in Congo. According to UN news, 55 people were killed and many others remained wounded by the attacks, supposedly carried out by suspected members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) armed group.
Conflict and violence continue to force tens of thousands of Congolese to flee their homes in the eastern provinces of Ituri, South Kivu and North Kivu, where military operations, armed groups attacks and upsurges in intercommunal tensions wreak chaos. According to a report released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, DR Congo hosts more than one tenth of the 50 million people internally displaced across the world.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) states that the ADF’s last attack in displacement sites and villages affected also seven children, among the death of 55 civilians for shooting or machetes, while in Boga town alone, 31 women, children and men were killed and bereaved family members told UNHCR partners that many of their relatives had beenburnt alive in their houses. Fearing new attacks, people have fled these sites to various nearby locations without anywhere to live but bushes out in the open, already impoverished host families struggling with limited resources or overcrowded churches.
After the attack, The United Nations Stabilization Mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO) deployed a Quick Reaction Force on the territory, while peacekeepers started medical evacuations for the victims. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called upon authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to investigate recent deadly attacks by insurgents in the east and reiterated the UN’s support to the Congolese people’s and government’s efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region.
Sources:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1093192
Author: Jasmina Saric; Editor: Gianpaolo Mascaro
