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Kinshasa – Attackers armed with machetes and axes hacked at least 16 civilians to death in a night-time assault on their village in the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, UN and local officials said yesterday.

Local administrator Bernard Amisi Kalonda said the brutal attack took place late on Tuesday in the Beni region of North Kivu province, an area which has witnessed numerous massacres in the past.

“Between 20:00 and 22:00, the enemy managed to get past army positions and kill peaceful residents in their homes, slashing their throats,” he said.

“The 16 bodies are in front of me, killed by machete or axe.”

He was not able to say if the attackers were Ugandan rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), who have long been active in the region.

The area has suffered chronic unrest for two decades, fuelled by local armed groups and others committing ethnic-related violence, or disputes over land and the region’s mineral wealth.

“Around 20:00, we heard people shouting and the sound of bullets,” said Adona Lesse, head of Eringeti village, adding that a search was continuing for more possible victims.

General Jean Baillaud, the military chief of the UN mission in the DR Congo known by its French acronym Monusco, said there were 17 dead.

ADF rebels have been accused of carrying out numerous bloody attacks on civilians in Beni and the neighbouring Ituri region which the United Nations says have cost the lives of more than 500 people since 2014.

Meanwhile, armed men kidnapped three  workers for the International Committee of the Red Cross in restive eastern DRC on Tuesday, the aid agency said.

The employees — who a local official said were of Congolese nationality — had been sent to work in Rutshuru in the south of turbulent Nord-Kivu province.

“We’ve had no news from our three workers” since shortly after 09:00 Tuesday, ICRC spokesperson Elisabeth Cloutier said, giving no further details. The armed men were not identified.

Captain Guillaume Ndjike, a military spokesperson in Nord-Kivu, said he had no details, but added that the army always advised “aid workers to contact the military before going into zones where militia are still operating.”

In early March three Congolese workers for Save the Children were taken hostage for seven days by unidentified kidnappers in Lubero, in central Nord-Kivu province.

The UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at the time condemned “the growing trend of attacks against humanitarian workers in eastern DRCongo.”

The area has suffered chronic unrest for two decades, fuelled by local armed groups and others committing ethnic-related violence, or over land or the region’s mineral wealth. — AFP