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| - A demonstrator was killed by a stray bullet in a protest in eastern DR Congo Friday over perceived UN failures to stem massacres by armed groups in the troubled region, police said. "Stones were thrown when police moved in to remove a barricade. Unfortunately, a demonstrator was hit by a stray bullet and died," said the police chief in the city of Butembo, Jean-Paul Ngoma. He did not say who fired the round. Leon Tsongo, of a campaign group called Parlement Debout ("Parliament, Rise"), said "the policeman who shot our comrade" was just six metres (20 feet) away. "His only wrong was to demand that MONUSCO (the UN force) leave our city, because its troops do absolutely nothing to protect the public from the massacres," he charged. Protests and strikes have erupted in Butembo, Beni and Oicha after a string of massacres by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the bloodiest of an estimated 122 armed groups that roam eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The ADF, a historically Ugandan Islamist group that holed up in eastern DRC in the 1990s, is linked to the so-called Islamic State, the United States said in March. According to the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), an NGO that monitors violence in the DRC's east, 1,840 civilians have been killed by the ADF since April 2017. On March 19, the UN said a surge of ADF attacks since the start of the year had claimed nearly 200 lives and forced 40,000 people to flee their homes. The toll does not include 25 villagers who were massacred by the suspected militia on March 30. str-bmb/mbb/ayv/ri/jv
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