(Kinshasa) The suicide bomber who unleashed his bomb on Christmas Day in Beni, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) killed eight people and injured 20, according to a new report released on Sunday by the authorities.
The first official report on Saturday reported five people killed in the explosion caused by the suicide bomber in a restaurant in central Beni, in the province of North Kivu.
The authorities immediately accused the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) of being responsible for the attack.
“At present, the provisional toll shows eight dead, including a captain of the 22e brigade who was at the restaurant with his wife and children ”, as well as the suicide bomber, declared at a press conference Patrick Muyaya, Minister of Communication and spokesperson for the Congolese government.
“There are also 20 injured including two young girls, two young boys, two ladies fractured in the lower limbs, two ladies seriously injured” as well as two local administrative officials, he added.
As for the suicide bomber, “his identification is difficult,” said Lieutenant-General Constant Ndima, military governor of North Kivu.
“We were only able to recover his head. He was completely torn apart by the explosion. But we will get there because we have a database, ”he told reporters.
Lieutenant-General Ndima invited “his constituents to be strong and vigilant, because no part of the country will be ceded to the enemy ADF who wants to install a caliphate in the Great Lakes region”.
North Kivu and the neighboring province of Ituri have been under a state of siege since early May, an exceptional measure that gave full powers to the military, but has so far failed to stop the abuses by armed groups. .
In these two provinces, the Congolese and Ugandan armies have been carrying out joint operations since November 30 against positions of the ADF, a rebel group born in Uganda.
The deadliest group in the DRC, the ADF are also accused by Kampala of being responsible for recent attacks on its soil, claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State (IS), which presents this group as its province in Central Africa (Iscap) .