A massacre of civilians in Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Ituri region is believed to have claimed "between 150 and 300 lives", an official in the UN observer mission in DRC said today, revising an earlier toll sharply downward.
Based on "witness reports", the United Nations had on Sunday put the death toll in last Thursday's massacre, which took place over three hours in about 15 villages in the parish of Drodro, at "at least 1,000".
Today, UN special envoy to the DRC and the second highest ranking official in the United Nations MONUC mission, Mr Berhooz Sadry, said on UN-run Radio Okapi that it was now believed "some 300 people have been killed."
It was Sadry who had announced on Sunday that "966 people, most of them ethnic Hemas in the village of Drodro in Ituri, had been killed by attackers" believed to belong to the rival Lendu ethnic group.
Sunday's death toll had been based on lists compiled by local leaders, MONUC said.
"The other people included in the earlier toll were injured, some very seriously, in machete attacks," Mr Sadry said today, adding that "a MONUC inquiry is continuing."
AFP