Rebels backed by ISIL (ISIS) have killed at least 52 civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this month, according to the United Nations peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) in the country, as both the DRC army and Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group accuse each other of violating a recently reached US-mediated ceasefire deal.
Attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) targeted the Beni and Lubero territories of the eastern North Kivu province between August 9 and 16, MONUSCO said on Monday, warning that the death toll could rise further.
The renewed violence comes as a separate conflict between the DRC army and the M23 group continues to simmer in the east of the country, despite a series of peace treaties signed in recent months. The government and M23 had agreed to sign a permanent peace deal by August 18, but no agreement was announced on Monday.
The latest ADF “violence was accompanied by kidnappings, looting, the burning of houses, vehicles, and motorcycles, as well as the destruction of property belonging to populations already facing a precarious humanitarian situation,” MONUSCO said. It condemned the attacks “in the strongest possible terms”, the mission’s spokesperson said.
The ADF is among several militias wrangling over land and resources in the DRC’s mineral-rich east.
Lieutenant Elongo Kyondwa Marc, a regional Congolese army spokesperson, said the ADF was taking revenge on civilians after suffering defeats by Congolese forces.
“When they arrived, they first woke the residents, gathered them in one place, tied them up with ropes, and then began to massacre them with machetes and hoes,” Macaire Sivikunula, chief of Lubero’s Bapere sector, told the Reuters news agency over the weekend.
After a relative lull in recent months, authorities said the group killed nearly 40 people in Komanda city, Ituri province, last month, when it stormed a Catholic church during a vigil and fired on worshippers, including many women and children.
The ADF, an armed group formed by former Ugandan rebels in the 1990s after discontent with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, has killed thousands of civilians and increased looting and killings in the northeastern DRC.
In 2002, following military assaults by Ugandan forces, the group moved its activities to neighbouring DRC. In 2019, it pledged allegiance to ISIL.
Among the 52 victims so far this month, at least nine were killed overnight from Saturday to Sunday in an attack on the town of Oicha, in North Kivu, the AFP news agency learned from security and local sources.
A few days earlier, the ADF had already killed at least 40 people in several towns in the Bapere sector, also in North Kivu province, according to local and security sources.
In response to the renewed attacks, MONUSCO said it had strengthened its military presence in several sectors and allowed several hundred civilians to take refuge in its base.
At the end of 2021, Kampala and Kinshasa launched a joint military operation against the ADF, dubbed “Shujaa”, so far without succeeding in putting an end to their attacks.
