About 60 people living in a camp for the homeless have been killed in a brutal overnight attack in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Men armed with guns and machetes raided the camp set up for those forced to flee their homes in the province of Ituri because of inter-ethnic conflict.
The local chief said most of the victims were women and children. Many of them had their throats slit.
The Codeco militia has been blamed for the massacre.
Its fighters are mainly drawn from the Lendu farming community, which has been at loggerheads with the province’s Hema cattle herders.
An estimated 1.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Ituri since violence began to escalate several years ago.
In a related news, at least 26 people have died after they were electrocuted by a falling power cable at a market in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The high-voltage cable snapped and fell onto houses and people shopping today near the capital Kinshasa.
Unverified footage posted to social media appeared to show the aftermath of the incident, with several motionless bodies in puddles of water.
It is not yet clear what caused the power cable to break.
But in a statement, Democratic Republic of Congo’s national electricity company said it believed lightning had struck part of the cable, causing it to fall to the ground.
Police said the collapse happened at the Matadi-Kibala district on the outskirts of Kinshasa and that a number of people died on the spot.
