Ugandan rebels spread fear with DR Congo massacres

"You sent soldiers to wipe us out, but here we are." That was the chilling message from Ugandan rebels during the latest massacre in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to one survivor.

The rebels slashed 24 men, women and children to death using axes and machetes, said Veronique, declining to give her full name, in a shaky voice from a makeshift hospital bed.

"Where are your protectors? If you want to stay in peace, you must not send us your soldiers," the killers said as they spread havoc through the village of Eringeti late Friday.

The mother of two broke down as she told of how the rebels decapitated her two-year-old child in front of her eyes.

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People attend the burial of victims in the town of Beni, in the north east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on October 20, 2014, where at least 22 people, most of them women and children, were hacked and clubbed to death by Ugandan rebels, the Allied Democratic Forces and National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU), several days ago.  AFP PHOTO/ALAIN WANDIMOYI

Eringeti is about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Beni, a town of half a million where 26 people were slaughtered with machetes on Thursday in another attack blamed on the rebels.

The Ugandan rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces and National Army for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU) have committed a string of atrocities since they were chased into neighbouring Congo by the Ugandan army in the 1990s.

The Congolese army, supported by UN peacekeepers from the MONUSCO stabilisation mission, had dealt them a series of severe blows earlier this year.

But the fighters have begun to recover, spreading fear across the north of North Kivu province.

They are believed still to number around 400 fighters.

In less than two weeks they have killed around 80 people with bladed weapons.

AFP