In a fresh attack in the unrest-plagued east of DR Congo, at least eight people were killed, including five women and two children, locals told AFP on Wednesday.

Eight people were killed in an overnight raid by armed men on the village of Bungushu in the North Kivu province, according to a local Red Cross employee.

According to him, four of them were killed by hacking, and the bodies of another four were later discovered in pit latrines.

While local administrative official Isaac Kibira stated that the death toll was "around nine", another civil society source -- under the same condition of anonymity -- confirmed the death toll.

The M23 rebels that battle the DR Congo's armed forces and local militias, were the suspects, according to Kibira.

The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a reputable observer of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, backed up that assertion.

It posted on Twitter that while its soldiers were pursuing a fighter with the Nyatura CMC, a primarily Hutu armed group, the M23 rebels attacked civilians.

"The killings... which occurred on the night of July 4 in Bungushu, Tongo and the surrounding area," the M23 militant group said in a statement, blaming them on the "Kinshasa government forces."

After a long period of inactivity, the M23 started fighting again in late 2021 and quickly seized large areas of land close to the DR Congo's border with Rwanda.

The government accused Rwanda of aiding the rebels as its beleaguered army struggled to cope; this accusation was refuted by Kigali but supported by United Nations analysts.

One notable accusation against the M23 is the massacre of over 170 people in November at Kishishe, a community located around 15 km (9 miles), north of Bungushu.

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