A feared militia on Tuesday attacked a prison in the restive east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), freeing hundreds of inmates, local officials and police said, as the Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the predawn assault.
Two prisoners were shot dead during the breakout from the Kangbayi Central Prison in Beni at about 4:30am, police wrote on Twitter, blaming the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Beni Acting Mayor Modeste Muhindo Bwakanamaha also attributed the attack to the ADF, which originated in the 1990s as a Ugandan Muslim rebel group and has been accused of killing more than 1,000 civilians in the region since October 2014.
Photo: Reuters
“Only about 100 detainees did not leave the prison from among the 1,455 who were there,” Bwakanamaha told reporters.
Citing the IS’ Amaq news agency, the Jihadist monitoring group SITE, said that the IS “took credit for the raid at Kangbayi prison ... which ultimately led to freeing 900 inmates.”
Amaq also reported that IS fighters attacked a Congolese military base near Beni.
The IS has since April last year claimed responsibility for several attacks blamed on the ADF, sometimes with factual errors, while the ADF itself has never claimed responsibility for attacks.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he did not know of a “formal link” between the ADF and IS after visiting the region in September last year.
“But it’s clear that there are real ties, because there is recruitment in other countries” of fighters who go to the DR Congo, Guterres told Radio France Internationale.
By noon on Tuesday, dozens of soldiers and police were locking down the prison, and two armored vehicles of the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO were on hand, a reporter at the scene said.
Residents were fearful of a sharp increase in attacks after the jailbreak.
The rights group Lutte pour le Changement, or “Fight for Change,” said that the escapees would “reinforce criminal gangs.”
The breakout “further dashes any hope of justice and truth over the killings in the region, because many of the presumed authors of massacres in Beni, whose public trials we have been awaiting for years, have calmly left [the jail],” it said.
US Ambassador to the DR Congo Mike Hammer, who visited the region two weeks ago, condemned the “ignoble attack,” while his Canadian counterpart, Nicolas Simard, said that “all light must be shed on the circumstances of this attack.”
The ADF has killed 570 civilians since the army launched a crackdown against them in November last year, experts have said.
The attacks are apparently reprisals for the army operation, or designed to warn locals against collaborating with the army.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not