In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, more than forty people were killed by rebels of the ADF, a group affiliated with the Islamic State, also called Daesh, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “The balance sheet which is 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 province of North Kivu, declared Kalunga Meso, the leader of the local group.
A report confirmed by Arsène Mumbere, president of local civil society, who detailed the attack: the attackers “entered the village Mukondi without noise” and killed most of the victims “with bladed weapons”.
Accused of having massacred thousands of civilians
The ADF are originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, 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.
The United States last week offered a reward of up to $5 million for any information that might lead to its leader, a Ugandan in his 40s named Musa Baluku.