Six Chinese miners and two Congolese soldiers are killed in a militia attack on a gold mine in Congo.

GOMA, Congo – A militia raid on a gold mine in northeastern Congo killed six Chinese miners and two Congolese soldiers, a civil society group said Thursday, the latest attack at a time of escalating violence in the resource-rich region.

Wednesday’s attack targeted the village of Gambala and the nearby Camp Blanquette gold mine in Ituri province, said Jean Robert Basiloko, a member of a local civil society group. A militia called the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo (CODECO) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Fighting has been raging for decades in eastern Congo between government troops and more than 120 armed groups. Bombs are often thrown at civilians because the militias want a share of the region’s gold and other raw materials. Violence in the region has escalated in recent months as security forces battle the militias.

On Wednesday, the militiamen set fire to houses and then attacked the mine, which is guarded by a rival armed group, the Zaire militia, Basiloko told the Associated Press.

The attackers killed six Chinese miners and two Congolese soldiers and kidnapped two other miners whose whereabouts are unknown.

CODECO and the Zaire militia are locked in a complex conflict involving economic ambitions and power struggles. The Zaire militia, a breakaway faction of CODECO, is fighting its former allies in a bitter manner.

CODECO is a loose coalition of militia groups drawn mainly from the ethnic Lendu farming community. CODECO attacks killed nearly 1,800 people and injured more than 500 in the four years to 2022, according to the African Center for the Study and Research on Terrorism.

The United Nations has said some of the attacks may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.