Dozens killed in suspected rebel attack in eastern DR Congo
At least 46 civilians are reported to have been killed in an attack by suspected rebel fighters on a village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a senior provincial official said on Thursday.
Local security forces have been dispatched to the village in Irumu territory to investigate, provincial Interior Minister Adjio Gidi said by phone.
“The death toll as of this afternoon is reported to be 46,” Gidi said.
He said the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) were behind the raid.
A local NGO leader told AFP news agency that all the victims were from the pygmy ethnic group.
The Ugandan armed group is believed to have carried out a string of massacres in the eastern DRC, killing more than 1,000 civilians since the start of 2019, according to UN figures.
After being alerted to the latest violence, troops went to the village and are in the process of recovering bodies, local army spokesman Jules Ngongo said. He did not say how many had been killed.
DRC’s eastern borderlands with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are home to a constellation of more than 100 different rebel groups, many remnants of its brutal civil wars that officially ended in 2003.
On Sunday, unidentified attackers killed at least six rangers in an ambush in eastern DRC’s Virunga National Park, a sanctuary for endangered mountain gorillas.
ISIL (ISIS) armed group has claimed responsibility for many suspected ADF attacks in the past, although UN experts have not been able to confirm any direct link between the two groups.
Photo: ADF is believed to have carried out a string of massacres in eastern DRC, killing more than 1,000 civilians since the start of 2019, according to UN figures [File: Roberto Schmidt/AFP]
