(Beni) More than fifty people were killed this week in the Beni region (eastern Democratic Republic of Congo), in a series of new attacks by rebels affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) group, local sources said on Friday to the AFP.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed 13 people during their latest attack on Thursday in three villages located in the territory of Beni, in the province of North Kivu, a civil society official told AFP.
“Seven men and six women” were killed “and several others (people) are missing,” said Kinos Katuo, president of civil society in the town of Mamove where the attacks took place.
During incursions carried out on Tuesday, the ADF killed 39 other people in three other villages in North Kivu, Léon Siviwe, an administrative official in Beni, told AFP.
Sources told AFP on Wednesday that 15 people had been killed in another attack the day before in Masau, one of these three villages.
“The toll could rise as searches continue, local people flee and head towards so-called safe areas,” Mr Siviwe said.
He added that several motorbikes and houses were also damaged in the attack.
The inhabitants of another village are fleeing their homes, the ADF rebels being around seven kilometers from their homes, John Bwanakawa, president of Cantine civil society, told AFP.
Around 85% of the population of this village left for neighboring towns, to take refuge in Beni in particular, he explained.
The ADF, originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, have been established since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they have killed thousands of civilians.
They pledged allegiance in 2019 to ISIS, which presents them as its “Central African province” (Iscap), and are also accused of recent attacks on Ugandan soil.
At the end of 2021, Kampala and Kinshasa launched a joint military operation against them, called “Shujaa”, without succeeding so far in putting an end to their abuses.