DRC: 5 killed as militiamen seek to recover arms in military depot

Five people were killed and four others wounded on Friday in an attack on an army position in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), an official source has disclosed. The dead comprise two Congolese soldiers and three militiamen.

The army’s spokesman in the region, Captain Mak Hazukay, confirmed the attack and casualty figures saying that the militiamen “were seeking to recover weapons and ammunition” in the depots of the Army General Staff.

“A Mayi-Mayi group attacked the FARDC (Congolese army) position in Kirumba, with a provisional record of three killed maï-maï, two FARDC soldiers killed and four wounded,” said Julien Paluku, governor of North Kivu province where Kirumba is located.

Located about 180 km north of Goma, capital of North Kivu, Kirumba is a locality in the territory of Lubero, bordering that of Beni where more than 700 civilians have perished in a succession of massacres since October 2014. The Mayi-Mayi militias are “self-defense” groups usually constituted on an ethnic basis.

During the Second Congo War (1998-2003), many of these groups were armed by the government to fight the Ugandan or Rwandan invaders. Some, notably in North Kivu, a region torn by conflicts for more than twenty years, have never disarmed.

AFP