Fifteen people were killed late on Tuesday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo region of Beni which has been dogged by heightened militia violence since November.

AFPO reports the administrator for the Beni region, Donat Kibwana, to say that in the past 24 hours, "14 bodies have been found hacked to death," while a pastor was killed in a separate attack.

According to a toll compiled by a civil society organisation, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), 265 people have now been killed in the Beni region since the army began a crackdown on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in October.

The attacks are widely seen as tactics by the ADF to frighten the locals into silence.

The military says its operation has resulted in the capture of the group's headquarters and the killing of five of its six leaders.

The ADF is a militant group that originated from Uganda in the 1990s.

The groups activities have threatened the DR Congo's Ebola response in the eaters region, which is one of the most affected by the disease.