Local officials said at least six people had been killed in a land dispute in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to reports, armed men invaded the town of Babusoko, 35 kilometres from Kisangani, the capital of Tshopo province, on Monday.

PHOTO | COURTESY DRC military

"We buried five people in the village yesterday (Wednesday)." "The sixth victim, a child (aged 18 months), died here in Kisangani from stomach injuries," Lubunga district mayor Baudouin Kayombo told AFP.

A police report notes that the incident was carried out by a group of people "who came out of the bush."

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According to local civil society representative Heritier Isomela, the violence was the latest event in a months-long feud between members of the Mbole and Lengola ethnic groups.

PHOTO | COURTESY DRC residents

He estimated the death toll at seven, with four critically injured and four still missing. When questioned by AFP on Wednesday, Norbert Lokula, the provincial interior and security minister, stated the attack was carried out by "a militia comprised of Mbole members."

He denounced "acts of barbarism" committed during the incursion.

Tensions erupted in April after the Lengola village sold land to a firm without informing the Mbole community.

PHOTO | COURTESY DRC residents fleeing

This year, intercommunal violence over land and property in the Lubunga region resulted in at least 55 deaths and displaced over 50,000 people, according to the UN's humanitarian coordination body OCHA.

Land disputes are common in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a vast but impoverished central African country of over 100 million inhabitants.

Much of eastern DR Congo is also rife with violence, where roving militias have inflicted devastation for three decades, a legacy of regional battles that erupted in the 1990s and early 2000s.