Date of Attack: February 2, 2022
Overview
At least 50 people, including women and children, were killed in an attack on Tuesday night at a site for internally displaced people in Savo, Ituri Province, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the UN said on Wednesday. (United Nations)
According to the UN Mission in the country (MONUSCO), the attack was carried out by members of the so-called Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) - a loose association of various Lendu militia groups.
The head of the mission, Bintou Keita, strongly condemned the attack, that also left 36 injured.
MONUSCO dispatched a patrol to the site upon receiving an alert about the attack. They also notified national security forces as well as its community alert network.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING BY FARHAN HAQ,
DEPUTY SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES
WEDNESDAY, 2 FEBRUARY 2022
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The Head of the UN Peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bintou Keita, strongly condemned an attack yesterday evening by CODECO militias against a site for internally displaced people in Savo, in the Ituri Province. Our colleagues say that at least 50 people, including women and children, were killed in this attack, and another 36 were injured. The UN Mission dispatched a patrol to the site upon receiving an alert about the attack. They also notified national security forces as well as its community alert network. UN peacekeepers exchanged fire with the assailants shortly after arriving on the scene and conducted joint operations with the Congolese army into the early morning, pushing the assailants out of the area and securing the IDP site to prevent further attacks. Humanitarian partners are providing medical supplies. This area is home to 600,000 displaced people. Our humanitarian colleagues are telling us that access by road is restricted due to insecurity, and the delivery of humanitarian assistance is challenged.
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
According to the UN Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) in the DRC, during 2020 an estimated 2,487 civilians were killed by armed groups in North Kivu, South Kivu, Tanganyika and Ituri provinces. The UN has recorded an additional 1,043 civilians, including 233 women and 52 children, killed in the first nine months of 2021. The majority of victims were in Ituri and North Kivu, where inter-communal violence, as well as fighting between the FARDC and various militias, has escalated. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), over 5 million Congolese are currently internally displaced, including an estimated 3 million children, while more than 942,000 refugees have fled to neighboring countries, making this the largest displacement crisis in Africa. The World Food Programme and UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimate that 27.3 million people are critically hungry.
In North Kivu attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) armed group, which has been perpetrating atrocities in the Beni region for more than six years, escalated after the FARDC launched an offensive in October 2019. Since then, the ADF has carried out retaliatory violence against villages near Beni, killing nearly 850 civilians and kidnapping 534 during 2020. UNJHRO reported that attacks by the ADF have been “systematic and brutal” and may amount to crimes against humanity and war crimes. From 11-12 November suspected ADF fighters perpetrated one of the deadliest attacks in North Kivu during 2021, killing at least 38 civilians and destroying the only health center in the village of Kisunga in Beni. Over the past year the ADF has expanded its operation into Ituri where other armed groups, particularly factions of the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO), a predominantly ethnic Lendu armed group, have also perpetrated widespread attacks on villages. Alleged CODECO fighters perpetrated a series of attacks on displacement sites in Ituri province between 19-28 November, killing more than 50 civilians and displacing at least 50,000.