ADF Rebels Kill Over 20 Civilians In Ituri Region Of DR Congo
Multiple sources said the ADF rebels killed more than 20 persons during the attack in which the Red Cross could not gain access to the site for security reasons.
At least 20 civilians were killed in Ituri province to the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo in an attack attributed to rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), HumAngle has learnt.
According to Dieudonne Malangay, Vice President of the civil society in the Walese Vonkutu chiefdom, the attack took place overnight between Thursday and Friday May 13, 2022 in Idohu village but the details were just known on Monday, May 16.
āOne survivor of the attack told me of having counted 30 corpses after the attackā, Malangay said in Bunia, chief town of Ituri province.
Red Cross workers who could not gain access to the site of the killings for security reasons, said they could not confirm the casualty figures, adding that they had been informed of the āmassacre of at least 30 personsā.
A United Nations source also said all information coming from the region could not be verified but that there were persistent reports of ā30 deadā.
The Kivu Security Barometer (KSB), which has experts in the restive regions to the east of the DR Congo, spoke of āat least 20 civilians deadā, in the village of Monge, near Idohu village and ā25 other civilians taken hostageā adding that āthe Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels were suspected to have carried out the atrocitiesā.
The eastern DR Congo has been gripped by violence for the past 25 years and is the target of frequent bloody attacks by the ADF rebel group, presented by the jihadist Islamic State as their Central African branch.
Since Nov. 30, 2021, after an attack on the Ugandan capital Kampala suspected to have been carried out by the ADF, the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) have been carrying out joint military operations with the DR Congo national army, FARDC, in the eastern part of the Congo.
Ituri and North Kivu provinces have since May 6, 2021 been under a state of siege decreed by President Felix Tshisekedi, an exceptional measure which has seen the replacement of civil administrators by military and police officers, but which has failed to bring back peace to the region.
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