The assessment is still provisional in the three villages of Ituri targeted by the rebels who claim to be Islamic State in Central Africa.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
New attacks of villages attributed to the ADF, militia affiliated to the Islamic State group, left at least 15 dead, Sunday, January 29, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a week after a similar attack Having left at least 23 dead, we learned from local sources.
Sunday attacks were launched against three villages of Ituri, while that carried out on the night of January 22 to 23 had targeted a locality in the neighboring province of North Kivu. A bomb attack in a Pentecostal church in North Kivu, also attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), had left at least 14 dead on January 15.
ADF, Muslim rebels of Ugandan origin, are active in these two provinces and considered one of the most deadly armed groups in the east of the DRC. The Islamic State jihadist group presents them as its branch in Central Africa.
“There were simultaneous attacks this Sunday from 4 am to 5 am in three villages on the Komanda-Luna section in chiefdom (grouping of villages) of Walese vonkutu”, reported Dieudonné Malangai, actor of civil society of this chiefdom in Irumu territory. “In the Manyala village, we found seven bodies (…), in Ofay, there are eight dead including seven women,” he told AFP, stressing that this assessment was provisional. A humanitarian source confirmed seven dead in Manyala and “at least eight” in Ofay.
“We are tired”
“These ADF rebels also attacked the Bandibese village, but they found resistance from the military who intervened and therefore there, there were no killed civilians,” said Malangai. “We are tired of giving the number of deaths every day,” he deplored.
To try to stop violence, the government placed in May 2021 North Kivu and Ituri as a “state of siege”, an exceptional measure which replaced civil administrators with police and soldiers. Since the end of 2021, a joint operation between the Congolese and Ugandan armies has also targeted ADF in Congolese territory. But violence continues.
Besides the ADFs, many other armed groups scour these two provinces, including the Codeco community militia in Ituri. She is accused of having set out on Friday in the Congolese army an ambush which, according to the army, killed five soldiers including two colonels. The UN force in the DRC spoke of 15 soldiers killed for its part, a security source establishing the balance sheet, under the cover of anonymity, at 17 dead.