At least 55 people have been killed in two attacks on villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the UN (United Nations) reported on Monday (31).
In what may have been the worst night of violence in at least four years, homes were set on fire and people abducted, according to the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office. The attacks took place in the village of Tchabi and an IDP camp near Boga, both on the Ugandan border.
Head of a civil rights group in Boga, Albert Basegu told Reuters news agency shouts from a nearby house had drawn his attention to the attack. “When I got there, I found out that an Anglican pastor had already been killed and his daughter was seriously injured.”
The Kivu Security Monitor (KST), which has documented riots in the turbulent eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo since June 2017, posted on social media that the wife of a local leader was among the dead, but didn’t blame any of them. group.
KST coordinator Pierre Boisselet said it was the deadliest day on record for the entity.
The army and a local civil rights association have accused the armed group Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). According to the UN, the organization was responsible for the deaths of more than 850 people in 2020, in a wave of attacks in retaliation for the operations the army had launched the previous year.
In March, the United States classified the ADF as a terrorist organization. The group has previously pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist faction, although the UN says there is little evidence of links to other militant Islamic networks.
On May 1, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi declared a state of siege in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri in an attempt to contain the growing attacks. Earlier this month, Uganda announced that it had agreed to share intelligence information and coordinate operations against the rebels, but refused to deploy troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.