14 Civilians Killed in DR Congo Attack

By Staff, Agencies

14 civilians were killed in an armed attack on eastern DR Congo, local officials said Sunday.

Suspected Allied Democratic Forces [ADF] militants on Saturday evening entered Kyamata, in Ituri province's Banyali Tchabi chiefdom, and killed 14 people "by machete," said Jacques Anayey Bandingama, the head of a local youth group.

The fighters also wounded two others and torched 36 houses in the village, he added.

Banyali Tchabi Chief Etienne Babanilau Tchabi confirmed the death toll to AFP and said that the victims had been buried in a common grave.

Armed groups have roamed the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo for decades, many of them a legacy of wars that flared in the late 1990s and early 2000s.