Following a series of assaults attributed to a local armed group, peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo uncovered mass graves containing the remains of 49 people. Wednesday in New York, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for the United Nations, informed reporters that burials had been discovered in two villages in the northeastern Ituri province, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of the town of Bunia. Including six children, a total of 42 fatalities were recovered in a mass grave in the community of Nyamamba, while the remains of seven males were located in another town, Mbogi, he added.
“After receiving allegations of assaults on people by CODECO militias over the weekend, peacekeepers promptly sent a patrol to the region. The horrific findings were made at this time,” he claimed, alluding to the armed organization known as the Cooperative for the Development of Congo. Haq said that the United Nations was demanding a probe to determine if the mass graves and the assaults were related. He said that the regional peacekeeping organization of the United Nations, known as MONUSCO, was “assisting the Congolese legal system in investigating the assaults” and demanded that “those responsible be brought to justice.” Ituri, a volatile region bordering Uganda, has seen a rash of violence in recent weeks, following the murder of a Lendu community teacher prompted retaliation assaults by CODECO, which claims to represent the ethnic minority. CODECO attributed the killing of the instructor to the Zaire militia, which claims to represent the Hema ethnic community.
A long-standing conflict between the Lendu and Hema villages resulted in thousands of killings between 1999 and 2003 prior to the entrance of a European peacekeeping team. Haq warned of a “severe worsening of the security situation” in Ituri on Wednesday, stating that at least 195 civilians had been murdered, 68 injured, and 84 kidnapped in assaults claimed to CODECO and Zaire militias since December. In addition, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced in Ituri province as a result of the violence, he noted.