AT LEAST 60 people have been arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after days of protests demanding the United Nations leave the country for its failure to stop jihadist violence in the region.

Hundreds of young people have blocked roads during demonstrations that have taken place in a number of cities in eastern DRC, including Beni, where police opened fire to disperse crowds on Thursday.

On Thursday evening, Beni police spokesman Nasson Murara said officers had cleared the barricades and made about 60 arrests.

“Young people have barricaded almost all the roads to ask the UN mission to leave this region plagued by massacre,” Beni Mayor Modeste Buhindo Bakwanamaha said.

Activist for the Lucha youth group Clovis Mutsova said: “We only demand two things: for [United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo] Monusco to leave and for the Congolese government to take its responsibility so that we can have peace.”

According to the Kivu Security Tracker, which monitors violence in the region, some 330 people have been killed so far this year.

The DRC’s eastern region is home to more than 100 armed gangs including the Allied Democratic Force (ADF) Islamist group which has killed more than 1,200 people in the Beni area since 2017.

Last month the UN said a wave of ADF attacks since the start of the year had killed nearly 200 people and forced 40,000 to flee their homes.

Monusco has around 12,000 troops deployed in DRC, with most of them based in the country’s volatile mineral-rich east.

But it has had little impact in preventing killings which more than doubled last year.

Despite the protests, Monusco insists it will not be withdrawing from DRC. Spokesman Mathias Gilman said on Wednesday: “We are here at the invitation of the government. It is not us who decide that we stay.”