Nairobi.- At least 25 people died last weekend in an attack in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a rebel group with loose ties to the Islamic State (IS), according to figures updated this Wednesday by local authorities.
“On Tuesday, we found four new bodies in Mambimbi-Isigo (Lubero territory, North Kivu province). This brings the number of victims of the recent massacre to 25 and several missing“, declared the head of the administrative area of Bapakombe (area where the town of Mambimbi-Isigo is located), Kasaho Kanyamulamba Boniface, to the Congolese news portal 7sur7.
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The events occurred between last Friday night and Saturday, and forced the population to abandon their homes in the attacked town and move to safer places in the area, such as the towns of “Njiapanda and Manguredjippa.” Boniface urged the region’s inhabitants to exercise extreme caution and to report any suspicious behavior or movement to the security forces and local authorities. The ADF are a Ugandan-originated militia, but currently have their bases in the neighboring Congolese provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, where they often perpetrate attacks and terrorize the population. Ugandan authorities also accuse the group of organizing attacks within their territory and, in November 2021, the Ugandan and DRC armies began a joint military operation against the group that has not ended the attacks. Their objectives are unclear, beyond a possible link to ISIS, which sometimes claims responsibility for their actions.Although the experts of the United Nations Security Council found no evidence of direct support from ISIS to the ADF, the United States has identified them since March 2021 as “a terrorist organization” affiliated with the jihadist group.
Since 1998, eastern DRC has been mired in a conflict fueled by more than a hundred rebel groups and the Army, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission (Monusco).
