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Access to Nyakunde town, located about 45 km southwest of Bunia in the embattled Ituri region of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), was still not possible on Friday due to continued fighting between the Ugandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Kisangani-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-K-ML) and tribal militias.
Several villagers from Nyakunde came to see the United Nations peacekeeping mission monitoring team in Bunia on Tuesday to report that 20 people had been killed by tribal militias on 5 September in the town hospital.
"MONUC [the UN mission in DRC] observers were not in a position to verify the reports due to fighting still going on in the area," spokesman Hamadoun Toure said. He added that the villagers said "the Ugandan-backed RCD-K-ML rebels now control Nyakunde".
Violence has flared in Ituri over the past month as Ugandan troops have almost completed their withdrawal from the DRC under an agreement between the two countries aimed at ending a four-year war that has left at least 2.5 million people dead.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
