GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Ethnic clashes between Hema herders and Lendu farmers in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province have killed about 30 people, the provincial vice-governor said on Friday, in the second such incident in a month. Tensions between the Hema cattle herders and Lendu farmers have largely laid dormant since a 1998-2003 war, which claimed the lives of thousands, but have flared again in recent months because of disputes over land. Militia activity has increased across eastern Congo’s borderlands with Uganda and Rwanda in the past year, stoked in part by President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate in December 2016. Alfred Ndrabu, a member of the Roman Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Commission in Ituri, said a colleague in the village of Maze had counted 49 bodies from Thursday’s clashes, which continued into Friday morning. “It was a case of reprisals by the two communities,” said local army spokesman Jules Ngongo, who did not yet have a death toll.“According to our information, there were cases of people being decapitated.”

Millions of people died during conflicts in Ituri and elsewhere in eastern Congo around the turn of the century, mostly from hunger and disease.
An attack on a village, part of the unrest between ethnic Lendu and Hema communities, leaves 49 people dead in the Ituri Province of DR Congo.