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New massacre in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, around twenty civilians were killed on Friday afternoon, in an attack attributed to the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces), affiliated with the Islamic State group. More than sixty deaths were attributed to the ADF for the month of March alone in the province of North Kivu.
Twenty people were killed Friday afternoon, April 8, in a new attack attributed to the ADF group, affiliated with the Islamic State group, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to local sources.
“The enemy ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) ambushed farmers on Friday around 4 p.m. (2 p.m. in universal time, editor’s note) near the village of Enebula,” Patrick Mukohe, deputy president of the local civil society.
He says he himself counted 21 bodies of men and women at the site of the massacre, located about thirty kilometers west of the town of Oicha.
“I have just received 19 bodies, all killed by machete,” said Jules Kambale, embalmer at the Oicha hospital morgue, contacted by AFP.
The military administrator of the territory of Beni, Colonel Charles Ehuta Omeanga, confirms this attack which he attributes “to ADF terrorists” but reserves the toll on the victims “while waiting for (his) elements to return from the field.”
In a video shared on social networks – and authenticated by Patrick Mukohe – a crowd surrounds the body of a man tied to a wooden frame, his throat cut. Men film his corpse, placed on a tarpaulin at the foot of a dump truck where other bodies are piled up, wrapped in body bags.
When the corpses arrived at the Oicha morgue, young people tried to block the nearby national road in protest. They were quickly dispersed by the police “who came to crackle bullets to clear the road”, specifies the vice-president of civil society. “The situation here is catastrophic,” he concludes.
More than 60 dead in a month
This attack is the latest episode in a wave of violence against civilians, which the army and local authorities attribute to the Allied Democratic Forces.
On Thursday, the UN indicated that at least thirty people had been killed on April 2 and 3 in the province of Ituri, and more than sixty deaths were attributed to the ADF for the month of March alone in the province. of North Kivu.
The ADF are originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels who have been rooting since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they are accused of having massacred thousands of civilians.
They pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State group, which presents them as its branch in central Africa.
The United States announced in early March that it was offering a reward of up to five million dollars for any information that could lead to its leader, a Ugandan in his 40s named Musa Baluku.
With AFP