At least 69 people were killed in Ituri province, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), on April 28, after fighters from the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO) militia launched retaliatory attacks on several villages following an assault by a rival armed group.
The strikes came in response to an earlier offensive by the Convention for the Popular Revolution (CRP), a militia aligned with the Hema ethnic community, on positions held by the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC) near the town of Pimbo, local and security sources told AFP. CODECO, which claims to defend the Lendu farming community, responded by targeting civilian areas in what a local civil protection official described as a broader toll.
Civil protection official Dieudonne Losa told AFP that more than 70 people had been killed, putting the figure higher than the 69 confirmed by security sources.
The bodies lay unrecovered for several days. The continued presence of CODECO fighters in the area made it too dangerous to retrieve them.
The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) escalated its response on the same day the death toll became known. MONUSCO said it strongly condemns the recent wave of deadly attacks targeting civilians in the restive east. The mission had already rescued nearly 200 people caught in crossfire from the earlier CRP assault on FARDC positions on April 30.
The Ente association, a nonprofit representing the Hema community, described the killings as a massacre and urged its members to avoid retaliation.
The violence reflects a wider deterioration across eastern DRC. Since early 2025, Ituri has seen a resurgence of the CRP, a group founded by convicted Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, who was found guilty in 2012 by the International Criminal Court for recruiting children into his rebel army and released in 2020.
Ituri province has been plunged into a humanitarian crisis, with nearly one million internally displaced people, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The region also faces threats from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Uganda-origin armed group affiliated with the Islamic State, which has conducted a separate campaign of attacks across Ituri and North Kivu in recent months.
