NORTH KIVU, DR Congo
A female peacekeeper from Malawi was killed in an attack by an Islamist militia in eastern Congo’s North Kivu province on Monday morning, the U.N. and the Malawian government said.
A local civil rights group said separately that fighters
with the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist armed group with Ugandan
origins, attacked the village of Kilia, around 18km southeast of Beni in the
province, killing at least five people. It was not clear if that figure
included the peacekeeper.
“A peacekeeper was killed in an attack by alleged ADF in
the Beni region,” said MONUSCO, the U.N. peacekeeping mission, which has
deployed around 12,000 troops to contain violence by more than 120 armed groups
in the east of the country.
Chitenji Kamanga, 28, was killed when the U.N. base in the
village of Kilia, was attacked at 13:30 local time, the Malawi Defence Force
(MDF) said in a statement.
“Malawi has lost a courageous, hardworking and disciplined
female soldier,” the MDF said.
In March the United States labelled the ADF a foreign
terrorist organization because of alleged links to Islamic State group,
although the U.N. has consistently downplayed the strength and nature of
Islamic State’s influence in Congo.
The last peacekeeper killed in Congo was an Indonesian
national on June 22 last year. More than 370 have been killed since the U.N.
first sent troops during the civil war in 1999.
The ADF, which has been active in Congo since the 1990s,
has carried out a string of reprisal attacks on civilians since the army began
operations against it in late 2019, killing around 850 people last year,
according to the U.N.
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