A new attack attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group, left more than 40 dead on the night of Wednesday March 8 to Thursday March 9 in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to local authorities.
“The toll, still provisional, is 38 people killed in Mukondi and eight in Mausa”, two villages close to each other in the territory of Beni, in the northern part of North Kivu province, said Kalunga Meso, the leader of the local groupement (group of villages) told AFP. This notable adds that “the ADF gathered people to then execute them”.
The human toll is confirmed by Arsène Mumbere, president of the local civil society, who specifies that the attackers “entered the Mukondi village without noise” and killed most of the victims “with bladed weapons”. According to him, in Mausa the bodies of the victims were found “charred in burnt houses”. The excavation is still ongoing, as the dwellings are far from each other, he added.
“On the night of March 8 to 9, militiamen from the Mwalika Valley set fire to the village of Mukondi” and “killed at least 36 people with knives”, published Thursday morning on its Twitter account the Barometer du Kivu (KST), a network of analysts based in eastern DRC. The provincial authorities have not yet communicated on this attack.
The ADF are originally Ugandan rebels, mostly Muslims, who have been rooting since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they are accused of having massacred thousands of civilians. In 2021, attacks on Ugandan soil were also attributed to them and a joint military operation between the Congolese and Ugandan armies was launched to hunt them down in North Kivu and in the neighboring province of Ituri.
Nearly 150 dead since the start of the year
The United States last week offered a reward of up to 5 million dollars (about 4.7 million euros) for any information that could lead to its leader, a Ugandan in his forties named Musa Baluku. According to the KST, the ADF, presented by the jihadist group Islamic State as its branch in central Africa, have killed nearly 150 people since the beginning of the year – including this latest attack.
Further south, the province of North Kivu has also been the scene of fighting for more than a year between the Congolese army and the rebels of the Mouvement du 23-Mars (M23), supported by Rwanda, according to Kinshasa and experts. of ONU. After several announcements of cessation of hostilities remained without effect in recent months, a ceasefire was supposed to come into force on Tuesday. But the guns did not stop and the M23 continued to expand its territory.
A Security Council delegation is expected Thursday evening in Kinshasa for a three-day working visit which should also take it to Goma, the capital of North Kivu, a city of more than 1 million inhabitants wedged between Rwanda to the east, Lake Kivu to the south and the M23 rebels to the north and west. The representatives of the Security Council intend to “assess the security and humanitarian situation in North Kivu”, the UN mission in the country (Monusco) said in a statement, and “assess the context in which this force is evolving”. .
Present in the DRC for twenty-three years and still today more than 16,000 strong, Monusco is increasingly criticized in the country for its inability to put an end to the violence that has been going on in the east for nearly thirty years. Dozens of armed groups operate in the region, many of which are a legacy of regional wars that erupted in the 1990s-2000s.
