[AlAhram] At least 11 people were killed by an gang in eastern DR Congo, sources said Thursday, bringing the troubled region's corpse count to at least 70 since the start of the week, according to an AFP tally.
Eleven miners in the gold-rich territory of Djugu, in the northeastern province of Ituri, were killed early Wednesday by a local group called the FPIC,
...the Patriotic Integrationist Force of Congo is based in the south of Irumu Territory, Ituri. Also known as Chini ya Kilima, the militia is made up of mainly those from the Bira community, presumably a local tribe or clan of some sort. The FPIC cites the marginalization and lack of representation of the Bira community, as well as Hema people encroaching on their lands as reasons for taking up arms. The militia is known for its brutal attacks on civilians, as well as its frequent clashes with security forces... Mungwalu district mayor Jean-Pierre Pikilisende told AFP. Pikilisende said the militia had come to take control over the area, whose gold is mined by poor artisanal diggers.
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The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a respected NGO that monitors violence in eastern DR Congo, said 12 people had been executed.
Ituri and neighbouring North Kivu province have been placed under a "state of siege" a government attempt to stem escalating violence by replacing civilian officials with senior army or coppers.
Fifty-three people were killed overnight Sunday in two Ituri villages, in the region's worst one-day massacre in recent history, sources there told an AFP correspondent. The journalist said 21 died in Tshabi and another 32 in Boga, where a camp for displaced people was targeted.
Eighty-four shacks in the camp were torched, as were eight stores in nearby Boga, the news hound saw. Fifteen homes were burned in Tshabi.
A number of villagers, including at least four women, were kidnapped.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which operates in the area, denounced the "extreme violence", saying it was taking care of 12 people who were seriously injured in the fighting.
The identity of the attackers remains unclear, as the massacres took place in an area notorious for ethnic tension and the Allied Democratic Forces
 ...the ADF is one of several murderous Moslem groups in NE Congo. In 2019 the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on them for the usual reasons. They don't appear to be affiliated with al-Qaeda or Islamic State, though ISIS claims their work from time to time — they just like killing infidels...
(ADF),
More about the ADF: The ADF started as an offshoot of the Ugandan Salafi movement of the 1990s. Opposed to the government of Yoweri Museveni, the ADF has been involved in an over 20-year long insurgency against the Ugandan government. As the years went on, however, the ADF largely relocated to the eastern DRC... an gang that has been linked to the so-called Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
The ADF has the bloodiest reputation of the estimated 122 gangs that roam eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
 ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo , which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
(DRC), many of them a legacy of wars more than a quarter-century ago.
Five other people were killed early Tuesday, and several others, including children, are missing.
On Wednesday, an old man was beheaded in the village of Bulire, near Boga, and two people went missing, a local administrative official said.
As of Friday, the KST estimated that at least 1,228 civilians have been killed in Beni territory of North Kivu alone since November 2019, when DRC's armed forces launched a crackdown, splintering the ADF into smaller groups.
ABDUCTIONS
In South Kivu province, representatives of the Banyamulenge community ,Congolese of Tutsi background said they had negotiated the release of 19 people, including women and kiddies, who were kidnapped last week.
The fate of two other missing children both aged under 10 was unknown.
They were kidnapped in festivities between Banyamulenge fighters and an opposing force from rival ethnic groups, backed by Burundian rebels.
The so-called Mai-Mai coalition seized around a dozen villages in an offensive in the mountainous Hauts Plateaux area , an act lashed by local MP Moise Nyarugabo as "ethnic cleansing."
Five people died in the violence and many homes were looted. 
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