The trial opened in conflict-torn Ituri province last month with the group facing charges of supplying rifles and ammunition to the notorious CODECO group, which has been blamed for a slew of ethnic massacres.

At a public hearing, the court's president Colonel Kelly Dianga sentenced the three senior officers, a captain and four rank-and-file soldiers for criminal association, war crimes, and participation in an insurrectional movement.

The civilians -- two women and a man -- were also sentenced to death for involvement in the affair, he added, while another two civilians received 10-year jail terms.

Another army major and a civilian were acquitted for lack of evidence.

The DR Congo has observed a de facto moratorium on capital punishment since 2003, according to the United Nations, but courts continue to hand down death sentences.

CODECO -- the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo -- is a political-religious sect that claims to represent the interests of the Lendu ethnic group.

The Lendu and Hema communities have a long-standing feud that led to thousands of deaths between 1999 and 2003 before intervention by a European peacekeeping force.

Violence then resumed in 2017, blamed on the emergence of CODECO.

Congolese security forces have governed Ituri and neighbouring North Kivu province since May last year, in a bid to crush the myriad militias active there. Civilian massacres have continued, however.