Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi on Friday declared a state of siege over the worsening violence in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu that has killed hundreds this year and displaced more than 1.5 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A surge in attacks by armed militias and inter-communal violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have killed over 300 people since the start of the year as government troops and U.N. peacekeepers struggle to stabilize the mineral-rich territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Announcing Tshisekedi’s decision, government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said: “The objective is to swiftly end the insecurity which is killing our fellow citizens in that part of the country on a daily basis.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He did not say what steps would be taken next under the state of siege in the two affected regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday armed police in North Kivu’sregional hub of Beni dispersed students who were staging an eight-day sit-in at the town hall to draw attention to the worsening security situation. Several students were wounded and others were arrested, according to a Reuters witness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Ugandan insurgent faction active in eastern Congo since the 1990s called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) is believed to be responsible for much of the recent bloodshed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has committed a spate of brutal reprisal attacks on civilians since the army began operations against it in late 2019, killing around 850 people last year, according to U.N. figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The violence has fuelled a humanitarian crisis with more than 1.6 million people displaced in Ituri out of a total population of 5.7 million people, UNICEF said in April. Some 2.8 million people there are in need of some form of emergency assistance, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi on Friday declared a state of siege over the worsening violence in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu that has killed hundreds this year and displaced more than 1.5 million. A surge in attacks by armed militias and inter-communal violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have killed over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27983,"featured_media":23451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[356,98],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-23450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-story","category-news","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27983"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23452,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23450\/revisions\/23452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}