Beni, DRC
Thirty-six people have
been killed in a suspected militia attack in the eastern DR Congo region of
Beni, where hundreds have died in violence since November, a local official
said Wednesday.
A survivor of a previous attack near Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo that was attributed to the armed group ADF |
Congolese troops have
been carrying out a military operation on an armed group in the east of the country -- long
plagued by various militias -- and militiamen have responded with a series of massacres against civilians.
"They
were all hacked to death. This brings (the toll) to 36 bodies," local Beni
governor Donat Kibwana told AFP, updating casualties from Tuesday's
attack.
Officials
had earlier reported 15 fatalities.
Two people
with skull fractures caused by machetes have been admitted to the hospital in
Oicha for surgery, an AFP reporter there said.
The main
attack took place late Tuesday in Manzingi, a village 20 kilometres (12 miles)
northwest from Oicha, while a pastor was also killed in nearby Eringeti.
According to
a toll compiled by a civil society organisation, the Kivu Security Tracker
(KST), 265 people have now been killed in the Beni region since the army began
its crackdown on the armed group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), on
October 30.
The
massacres seem to be a tactic by the ADF to frighten the population into
silence, local commentators say.
The group
has also disrupted operations to curb an outbreak of Ebola in North Kivu
province.
Tuesday's
massacre occurred to the west of the ADF's usual area of operations, which is
closer to the Ugandan border.
The army
offensive, unfolding in thick forest and jungle, has led to what the military
say is the capture of the group's headquarters and the killing of five of its
six leaders.
The ADF,
blamed for the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Beni since October
2014, began as an Islamist-rooted rebel group in Uganda that opposed Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni.
It fell back
into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995 during the Congo Wars and
appears to have halted raids inside Uganda. Its recruits today are people of
various nationalities.
UN experts
estimated the ADF in 2018 to number around 450 fighters.
A report to
the UN Security Council last week said the ADF seemed to follow an extreme
Islamist ideology, but there is no information on whether the group had links
with international jihadist groups.
The spate of
massacres has become a major challenge for President Felix Tshisekedi, who took
office a year ago last Friday.
In November,
angry protests erupted in the city of Beni, the region's administrative hub, as
citizens accused the UN peacekeeping force in DR Congo of failing to protect
them.
Tshisekedi,
in his first state-of-the-nation address to Congress, last month said he had
changed the army command in Beni and sent 22,000 troops to the region.
No comments:
Post a Comment