The International Criminal Court is "deeply concerned" about reports of renewed violence in restive northeastern DR Congo and plans to send a mission to the country soon, the court's chief prosecutor said Thursday.
Fatou Bensouda said there had been "credible reports of armed attacks on civilians and camps which have escalated in recent months in the Democratic Republic of Congo's lawless Ituri province.
"Moreover, these reports indicate the killing and maiming of many civilians, many of whom are children," Bensouda said in a statement, issued at the ICC's headquarters in The Hague.
Armed gangs also carried out abductions, sexual-based crimes against girls and women, and looted and pillaged homes, property and public buildings, she said.
Warning that the crimes fell within the jurisdiction of the court, which has been investigating in the DR Congo since 2004, Bensouda called "on all groups and all parties to cease all attacks without delay."
She also urged Congolese authorities to continue efforts to protect civilians and to take measures to prevent renewed bloodshed.
"My office will deploy a mission to the DRC as soon as conditions related to the current COVID-19 health crisis allow," Bensouda said.
In the latest massacre in Ituri, 16 civilians, five of them children, were killed overnight Tuesday at a village near Mambisa, north of the provincial capital Bunia, a local official told AFP.
The authorities attributed it to a notorious ethnic militia called CODECO, for the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo.
The organisation is mainly drawn from the Lendu ethnic group, who are predominantly farmers and clash repeatedly with the Hema community of traders and herders.
Nearly 300 civilians have been killed since the start of the year in attacks blamed on CODECO, while the UN says around 200,000 people have fled their homes.
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, in a visit to Ituri in late January, said "crimes against humanity" had been perpetrated.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in Hema-Lendu fighting between 1999 and 2003.
Set up in 2002 to prosecute the world's worst crimes, the ICC has successfully prosecuted three former warlords stemming from fighting in the mineral-rich eastern DR Congo.
In its latest case, the ICC's judges sentenced rebel chief Bosco Ntaganda to 30 years in jail for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ituri in 2002-2003.
The verdict is currently subject to appeal.