At least 69 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in attacks carried out by fighters linked to the CODECO militia in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to local and security sources. The attacks, which occurred in late April in the gold-rich province of Ituri — a region bordering Uganda that has suffered years of chronic violence — took several days to fully document due to persistent insecurity that prevented rescuers from safely recovering victims. A civil society official in Ituri, Dieudonné Losa, said the toll was not yet final and likely exceeded 70 dead.

CODECO, which claims to defend the rights of the Lendu ethnic community — a group whose members depend primarily on farming — has for years been locked in deadly intercommunal conflict with the Hema, a predominantly pastoralist community. The violence is the latest episode in a broader pattern of attacks in Ituri, where multiple armed groups operate across densely forested and remote terrain. Among the most active is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia originally formed by Ugandan rebels that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and is accused of numerous atrocities across Ituri and the neighbouring province of North Kivu. Separately, the ADF killed at least 36 people in two days of attacks in the Ituri-North Kivu border area in early May, with fighters targeting isolated villages and the town of Biakato, killing residents with bullets and machetes. A report published by Amnesty International this week accused the ADF of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including kidnappings, forced labour, child soldier recruitment, and widespread sexual violence against women and girls.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC, known by its French acronym MONUSCO, condemned what it called a "wave of bloody attacks targeting civilians" across the country's eastern provinces, confirming that "dozens of civilians" had been killed in recent days across Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu. The mission also expressed serious concern over reports of airstrikes and shelling on 8 May in North Kivu that resulted in civilian casualties. The mineral-rich eastern DRC has been engulfed in overlapping conflicts for three decades, involving dozens of armed groups. Since 2021, Ugandan forces have been deployed alongside the Congolese army specifically to combat the ADF, though the broader humanitarian situation across the east continues to deteriorate.