About 20 people have been killed in an attack in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), with sources blaming rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group.
“The enemy ADF [Allied Democratic Forces] ambushed farmers at around 4pm on Friday near the village of Enebula,” local civil society leader Patrick Mukohe said.
Enebula said he had counted 21 bodies of men and women at the site of the massacre, about 30km west of the town of Oicha, in North Kivu province.
Photo: AFP
Jules Kambale, who works in the Oicha hospital morgue, said it had received 19 bodies.
Charles Ehuta Omeanga, the regional military administrator, confirmed the attack, which he attributed to “ADF terrorists,” but said he was not in a position to provide a definitive toll.
In a video shared on social media, and authenticated by Mukohe, a crowd surrounded the body of a man tied to a wooden frame after his throat was slit. The body was placed in a tarpaulin and added to a pile of blood-stained body bags.
The ADF, originally insurgents in Uganda, gained a foothold in eastern DR Congo in the 1990s and has since been accused of killing thousands of civilians, becoming the deadliest of scores of outlawed forces in the deeply troubled region.
Since 2019, some ADF attacks in eastern DRC have been claimed by the Islamic State, which describes the group as its local offshoot, the Islamic State Central Africa Province.
When the bodies of the latest victims arrived at the Oicha morgue, some youths tried to block the nearby national road in protest. They were quickly dispersed by the police who, according to one civil society source, fired bullets in the process.
“The situation here is catastrophic,” the source said.
The UN mission in the country, MONUSCO, on Thursday said that more than 30 people had been killed by the ADF in neighboring Ituri province earlier in the week.
Last month, the US offered a reward of up to US$5 million for information concerning ADF leader Seka Musa Baluku.
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