More than 50 people were killed and thousands displaced in the latest clashes between Lendu and Hema groups in the eastern district of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the United Nations peacekeeping mission there. A Lendu militia called the Nationalist Front for Integration (FNI), including 30 children, attacked people from the Hema ethnic group and 10,000 people from Ché and other villages were seeking protection, Mamadou Bah, a spokesman for the UN Organization Mission in the DRC (MONUC), said at the weekly briefing for journalists. The MONUC multidisciplinary investigating team learned that armed civilians were in the militia, as were about 30 children aged 12 to 15, he said yesterday. |