Kinshasa - Communal violence has claimed at least 100 lives and displaced 53 000 people since the end of October in the Democratic Republic of Congo's north-west Orientale province, the United Nations said on Monday.
On Friday, two villages were attacked, but in one of them, Burburu, 8 000 people had fled for fear of a raid, announced the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), which could not give casualty figures.
Burburu is 150km south of Dongo, on the banks of the Oubangi river, which separates the DR Congo from Congo-Brazzaville. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there were clashes at Sabasaba, 25km south-east of Dongo, in which about 10 people died.
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The violence broke out on October 29 and 30 in Dongo between the Lobala, or Enyele, people and the Bamboma (or Boba) people, who come respectively from the villages of Enyele and Monzaya, but are also installed in other nearby places.
For years, these ethnic groups have argued the right to waters rich in fish and the dispute has flared up into violence. The United Nations says people have been killed with machetes and firearms.
Some have also drowned, trying to cross the Oubangi to seek refuge in the Republic of Congo.
Dongo is completely deserted, with corpses lying in the streets, and many homes and stores have been burned.
About 53 000 people have fled the violence: 37 000 to the north of the Congo Republic, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and about 16 000 others who have stayed in the DRC, according to MONUC.
Dongo interior minister Guy Inenge told AFP that the motives behind the violence went further than a dispute over fishing rights, describing the fighting as a "rebellion".
Inenge claimed 400 former members of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), the main opposition party in the DRC, were involved in the clashes.
DR Congo government spokesperson Lambert Mende described the Lobala's actions on Friday as "criminal ethnic cleansing".
A MONUC official told reporters that leaders of the group were "in the process of recruiting young people by offering them money" to participate in the violence.
MONUC is reviewing whether to send in air and river patrols to the isolated region "to get a better picture of the situation" and "help find a solution for peace", the official said. - Sapa-AFP
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