SW News: According to a local official and a human rights organization, militants twice invaded Ituri, a gold-rich province in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on February 12 and 13, killing 22 people as part of the region's ongoing turmoil, as reported by Voice of America.

In the first incident on Sunday, eleven persons were killed in the Djugu territory town of Mongbwalu.

According to these early reports, the CODECO militia had "killed at least 20 people and burned numerous houses," according to Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York.

Mayor Jean-Pierre Bikilisende of Mongbwalu attributed the assault to CODECO, one of the numerous militias operating in the volatile east of the central African nation.

CODECO (Cooperative for the Development of Congo) is a militia of several thousand men who claim to protect the Lendu tribe in Ituri from the Hema tribe and the national army. Reuters reported, using information from Bikilisende, that rebels opened fire on a man selling phone credit and then on other persons in the street before fleeing in a car pursued by police.

The spokesman emphasized attacks on two villages in a separate section of the province that were related to the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces), a militia depicted as Islamic State's branch in Central Africa.

According to Christophe Munyanderu, coordinator of the regional organization Convention for the Respect of Human Rights (CRDH), twelve people were killed, and the attackers were members of the Uganda-based ADF, which has been active in the eastern Congo for a long time. It often conducts deadly attacks on cities and has claimed allegiance to the Islamic State.

In spite of local, regional, and United Nations peacekeeping efforts, militia fighting has plagued the vast, mineral-rich east for the last two decades.