As reported by Aljazeera, on 27 August nineteen civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo were burned and hacked to death by Ugandan rebels. The newspaper reports also that, a day after the incident, fourteen bodies were found by Red Cross workers : they went into the nearby forest to look for those missing after the attack on Kasanzi village in the Beni territory of North Kivu. According to Aljazeera, the local officer Kakule Kalunga confirmed that nineteen people were killed by the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), adding that the victims were killed by bladed weapons and fire and that houses were also set ablaze.
The ADF is a group affiliated to ISIL (ISIS): it has publicly aligned itself with Islamic State, which in turn has claimed responsibility for some of its attacks. Beni lies at the heart of an area where the ADF have mounted deadly attacks in spite of emergency security measures by President of DR Congo, Felix Tshisekedi. The area was already subjected to an escalation of attacks since March. Aljazeera reports that on 31 March Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia fighters killed 23 people in yet another massacre in Beu Manyama-Moliso, a village in the Beni region.
Since May, the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri have been under a state of siege, replacing civilian authorities with army and police officers to fight armed groups. Earlier this month, a contingent of US special operations forces arrived in the area to help the Congolese army in their fight against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
According to Voanews, in August President Felix Tshisekedi said special forces from the United States would soon deploy to the east to gauge the potential for a local anti-terrorism unit to combat Islamist violence. The ADF was blacklisted in March by Washington as a terrorist group.
Sources:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/28/civilians-killed-adf-ugandan-rebels-dr-congo
https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/suspected-militants-kill-19-eastern-congo-village
Author: Jasmina Saric; Editor: Gianpaolo Mascaro
