At least 40 people were killed in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) early on Tuesday, May 26. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) claimed the latest massacre in Samboko village located in the southwest part of the city of Bunia. The members of ADF slaughtered 40 residents with machete before ransacking the village for food and valuables, a day after killing at least 17 people in the nearby village of Makutano.
In the past two months, the growing violence carried out by a number of armed groups, including the two recent massacres, have forced around 200,000 people to leave Ituri province. “Some people have fled while others have given themselves the courage to stay for the moment,” said Gili Gotabo, a human rights activist in the region.
A month before the incident, ADF killed at least 43 people in a three-day encounter between armed groups and soldiers in the eastern DRC. The deadliest occurred in the territory of Mahagi where 21 civilians were stabbed and gunned down by the group, followed by another attack in the eastern town of Beni in North Kivu province that resulted in six deaths.
The ADF assailants are held accountable in the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians in Beni region since 2014, as Al Jazeera reported, before reprising their military offence that has led to active massacres since November last year. The group shifted its target to the Kivu region which has experienced an increase of attacks on civilians in the last three weeks.
The ADF group was established in Uganda as an opposition to President Yoweri Museveni before it moved to DRC in 1995.
To read more, please read:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/40-killed-latest-dr-congo-massacre-200527164912839.html
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/05/27/world/africa/27reuters-congo-violence.html
Author: Matthew Burgos
