North Kivu Governor Carly Nzanzu Kasivita said the attack took place in an area where the Democratic Forces have been working for the Liberation of Rwanda for a long time, but that the investigation is continuing. The group is one of the largest foreign armed groups in the country, a rebel group linked to genocide in 1994 in Rwanda.
“According to initial investigations, they were killed by a group of six people who spoke Kinyarwanda,” the governor said in a telephone interview, referring to the language spoken in Rwanda.
The convoy is on its way from Goma to Rutshuru, a city about 45 km north, on a route that would take the vehicles through Virunga National Park, although it is unclear where the attack took place exactly. The World Food Program said a number of other people were injured in the attack.
The attack comes amid a spate of violence that has engulfed the area in recent weeks, with a deadly attack by another militia in Virunga National Park that left six people dead last month.
Virunga, Africa’s first national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is known as home to the region’s famous and endangered mountain gorillas. But the North Kivu region was also the scene of frequent violence, as the conflict between government and militia groups, as well as the effects of neighboring conflicts, washed out.
Last year, 17 people were killed in another attack in Virunga, one of the deadliest in the park in recent years, which was also allegedly carried out by the Democratic forces for the liberation of Rwanda.
In the years since its independence in 1960, after a brutal colonial period, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been plagued by civil wars and for decades by a succession of corrupt dictators.