Massacre in DRC: the government speaks of around 300 dead
Steph Deschamps / December 6, 2022
The DRC's Minister of Industry, Julien Paluku, former governor of North Kivu, estimated at a press briefing on Monday evening that the November 29 massacre in the village of Kishishe had left "around 300 dead ».
On Thursday, the army accused the M23 of having massacred at least 50 civilians in this village in North Kivu (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo), a figure that the government established the next day at "more than a hundred" dead.
The rebel movement rejected these accusations and acknowledged the death of eight civilians in this village, killed according to it by "stray bullets" during fighting with militiamen.
To explain the new figures in the government's possession, Paluku and Muyaya said they came from civil society and an "organization that brings together all the communities" in the region.
"Each community has been able to count, through the antennas that are in Kishishe and surroundings, the people who died," explained Paluku, who served as governor of North Kivu province from 2007 to 2019.
"One community alone has more than 105 people killed," Paluku said.
We have around 300 dead," he said, in response to a question, "people who are known, regular inhabitants of Kishishe, who have nothing to do with the FDLR (Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), nothing to do with the Mai-Mai" (community militia), he said.
In his opening remarks, the Minister of Industry spoke of some "272 civilians killed".
Patrick Muyaya mentioned 17 children among the dead, "according to the first elements given". "There are difficulties in cross-checking all the figures," he said, "the area is under M23 occupation." "A consolidation work is underway," he added.