Six people were stoned to death on Wednesday by angry residents of Bunia, the main town of the troubled Ituri District of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN mission in the country, known as MONUC, reported. "The Red Cross recovered the bodies of five men of Lendu ethnicity, and the body of one woman of Nande ethnicity," Leocadio Salmeron, the MONUC spokesman, said. He added, "While the precise reason for these stonings remains unknown, it could be because of their ethnicity."
| I put it down to savagery, myself... |
Economically-driven ethnic strife in natural resource-rich Ituri between Hema and Lendu militias caused between 200,000 and 350,000 people to flee when fighting worsened in May, humanitarian sources have reported. The latest killings follows a stream of recent reports from NGOs and local residents regarding massacres in the towns of Fataki, Nizi and Drodro during fighting between the Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), a predominantly Hema militia, and the Front des resistants pour la protection de l'Ituri (FRPI), a predominantly Lendu militia. UPC Secretary-General John Tinanzabo has accused Lendu combatants of the massacre of Hema populations, while Lendu community representatives have accused Hema combatants of mass killings of Lendus.
| And Nandes are fair game for everybody... |
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