We learned from local sources that at least twenty civilians were killed in an attack attributed to ADF rebels linked to the Islamic State group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on the night of Monday to Tuesday.
This attack occurred on the outskirts of Oicha, a town in Beni territory in the north of North Kivu province, where the attackers killed and looted.
“So far we have 20 bodies… tension is high, the ADF has put Oicha into mourning again,” Nicolas Kikuku, the city’s mayor, told AFP by telephone early this morning.
“We have just deposited 26 bodies in the mortuary of the Oicha General Hospital,” said Darius Syaira, civil society rapporteur for the Beni Territory. According to him, these victims are 12 minors and 14 adults, most of whom were killed by bladed weapons.
Mr Syaira also mentioned the high tension in Oicha, where humanitarian vehicles preparing to distribute food were set on fire by protesters.
“We don’t need humanitarian aid, but we want security,” one of the protesters said when asked why residents attacked the trucks.
The originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces), have established themselves since the 1990s in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are accused of massacring thousands of civilians.
They swore allegiance to ISIS in 2019, which claims some of their actions and portrays them as its “Central African Province” (Iscap in English).
On Ugandan territory, authorities accuse them of killing three people, including two foreign tourists, in Queen Elizabeth Park on October 17. This attack was claimed by ISIS the next day.
Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo launched a joint offensive in late 2021 to drive the ADF from its Congolese strongholds, but have so far failed to put an end to the group’s attacks.