Attackers killed 10 women, eight children and four men in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) overnight to Saturday, according to local authorities. The assault occurred 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Beni, in North Kivu province, where more than 25 people died in a similar attack on Thursday. The attacks have raised doubts about claims by the government that it had defeated a Ugandan group that has terrorized the area for the past two decades.

"This is a genocide, the way in which the ADF kills these people," Omar Kavota, of the Civil Society of North Kivu, told the news agency Reuters on Saturday, referring to the militant group ADF-NALU, which has repeatedly assaulted villages in the region..

On Wednesday, UN peacekeepers had announced that the ADF-NALU had killed 15 people, including six children between the ages of 7 and 17, in raids between Oct. 5 and Oct. 8. The ADF-NALU operates alongside a string of other local and foreign armed factions in a border region coveted for its mineral wealth.

During the summer, the United Nations helped broker a ceasefire between the government and at least one armed faction. However, the rebels have been reluctant to disarm during the allotted period. Earlier this week, the DRC expelled a UN rights official after the United Nations released a report detailing police atrocities in the country.

Last year, government troops defeated an insurgency by M23 rebels, which had posed the most serious threat to government's authority since the vast Central African country's last war formally ended in 2003.

Neither the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC nor a Congolese army spokesman in North Kivu province had an immediate comment on the latest reported bloodshed.

mkg/tj (Reuters, AFP)