Congo: Drunken soldier fires gun shots causing stampede, 13 dead

“Eight people drowned when they threw themselves in the river, four were killed in accidents and one person died of a heart attack,” he said.

Fears of gun violence run deep in Beni, which lies in a strife-torn, unstable region of the DRC.

More than 700 people have died since October 2014 in massacres blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a partly Islamist armed group of Ugandan origin.

Fifty-one people were killed in Beni on August 13, a gruesome slaying that touched off mass protests against the central government in Kinshasa.