50 killed in attacks in DR Congo's Ituri province

YAOUNDE, Cameroon

The death toll from weekend attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has risen to at least 50, according to monitoring organization the Kivu Security Tracker (KST).

In a tweet Monday, KST said the attacks claimed 28 lives in Boga village and 22 in Tchabi village in Ituri province, marking the highest death toll it had ever recorded in a single day.

Among the victims of the Tchabi attack was the wife of the chief of the Banyali-Tchabi chiefdom, KST said.

Though no group has claimed responsibility for the killings, a neighboring Ugandan rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), has been blamed for such attacks because the area around Beni has been a fiefdom for the group's attacks for over a year.

To contain armed groups, President Félix Tshisekedi declared a state of siege earlier this month in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, bordering Uganda.

The ADF rebels – originating in Uganda's northeast in the 1990s – have been attacking and killing civilians as well as UN personnel in eastern DRC for the past few years.

The modus operandi of these rebels is atypical: peasants are killed with knives, generally in the evening in the bush, returning from the fields or in the village at nightfall.

The exploitation of natural resources continues to be a root cause and driver of conflict in the east of the country, according to the UN.

Most of the militia groups have set aside their political demands and are involved in mineral trafficking.

The DRC is the world’s most neglected displacement crisis according to the Norwegian Refugee Council’s annual list due to overwhelming needs and an acute lack of funding as well as media and diplomatic inattention.