{At least 30 civilians were killed Sunday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo village of Luhanga.}<\/p>\n
Most of those slain were Hutus, and local officials said an ethnic Nande militia was behind the killings, which are the latest in a year-long cycle of violence between the two ethnic communities DRC’s North Kivu province.<\/p>\n
Joy Bokele, a territorial administrator in North Kivu, said militants first attacked a DRC military post before the assault on Luhangabegan.<\/p>\n
“They started by attacking the FARDC position. While they were attacking the FARDC, another group was executing the population with bladed weapons or bullets,” Bokele told AFP.<\/p>\n
Ethnic rivalries, foreign invasions and competition for mineral-rich land have stoked persistent conflict among eastern Congo’s dozens of rebel groups over the last two decades, costing millions of lives.<\/p>\n
Tensions have spiked between the Hutu and neighboring communities since Congo’s army launched a 2015 military offensive against the FDLR, displacing large numbers of fighters and Hutu civilians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{At least 30 civilians were killed Sunday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo village of Luhanga.} Most of those slain were Hutus, and local officials said an ethnic Nande militia was behind the killings, which are the latest in a year-long cycle of violence between the two ethnic communities DRC’s North Kivu province. Joy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[2475],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-voice-of-america"],"bylines":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30699"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30699"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}