Up to 12 people were killed late Monday when a militia group attacked the city of Beni in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local sources told AFP.

“The provisional toll is 12 civilians killed by machete and firearms,” deputy mayor Modeste Bakwanamaha said Tuesday.

Violence resumed in the area, in the southeast of the city, shortly after daybreak, he said.

Other sources put the death toll at 11.

“A rebel was killed by the army,” Bakwanamaha said, while the head of the district, Richard Paluku, said two soldiers had also died.

Hundreds of civilians in Beni have died at the hands of militiamen since 2014.

The attacks are typically blamed on a shadowy Islamist-rooted group called Allied Democratic Forces or ADF, which was forced out of Uganda in the mid-1990s.

AFP