-TITAN Posted January 15, 2021 Posted January 15, 2021 (CNN)Forty-six people from the ethnic Pygmy group were killed -- some of them decapitated -- on Wednesday in a suspected militant attack in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, according to an NGO official based in the central African country. An armed group shot civilians and decapitated others with machetes in Ambedi, a village in Irumu territory in Ituri province, said Christophe Munyanderu, regional coordinator for the NGO Convention pour le respect de droit de l'homme, or Convention for the Respect of Human Rights. A spokesman for the Armed Forces of the DRC in Ituri attributed the attack to the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group that operates in the region. Two of the assailants were arrested and are currently under interrogation, the spokesman said. Most of the victims were women and children, said Rachel Taruwayo, the regional coordinator for the provincial government. Munyanderu said that a Pygmy who was hunting during the attack determined the death toll. When he returned to the village, Munyanderu said, he found a female survivor with a gunshot wound and a two-year-old child whose hand had been chopped off. On Thursday, they reached a police post about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the scene of the attack and were taken to a hospital. The woman and child are now out of danger, said David Dedonga, a doctor at Bwanasura hospital. The ADF has intensified its attacks against civilians in the eastern provinces of the DRC in recent years, the United Nations said in July. These attacks have left more than 1,000 dead between January 2019 and June 2020 and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the UN. The group has battled governments in East Africa since the 1990s and has ties to several international jihadi groups. Six Virunga park rangers killed in eastern Congo ambush (CNN)Armed men on Sunday killed at least six rangers and wounded several others in an ambush in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Virunga National Park, a sanctuary for endangered mountain gorillas, the park said. The identity of the assailants was not immediately clear, said Olivier Mukisya, a Virunga spokesman. Previous attacks against the rangers have been blamed on various militias who fight to control land and natural resources in eastern Congo. "We confirm this sad news. A group of armed men attacked our positions in the region of Nyamitwitwi in the middle of Virunga National Park," Mukisya told Reuters. More than 200 rangers have been killed in the past, including 12 last April in the deadliest such attack in recent memory. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, it is Africa's oldest national park and largest tropical rainforest reserve, covering 7,800 sq km (3,000 sq miles) with a varied landscape of active volcanoes, savannahs, mountains, lakes and forests. Its mountain gorillas, which live on the flanks of a dormant volcano in the park's southern sector, are perhaps the biggest draw for tourists who venture across the border from Rwanda. However, tourism has suffered badly as militant groups and criminal gangs continue to fund a long-running war by pillaging the park's resources.
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