More than 50 people were killed in two separate attacks on villages in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo during one of the worst violent nights the area has seen in at least four years, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST) research group said on Monday.
The army and a local civil rights group blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an extremist armed group, for looting the village of Tchabi and a camp for displaced people near Boga, another village. Both are close to Uganda’s border.
Albert Basegu, head of a civil rights group in Boga, told Reuters by phone that he had been alerted to the attack by the sound of crying on the neighbor’s house.
“When I got there, I discovered that the attackers were already killing an Anglican pastor and his daughter was also seriously injured,” Basegu said.
KST, which has been mapping unrest in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since June 2017, said on Twitter that the wife of a local boss was among the dead. The blame for the murders is not attributed.
“It is the deadliest day ever recorded by KST,” said Pierre Boisselet, the research group’s coordinator.
The ADF is believed to have killed more than 850 people by 2020, according to the UN, in a series of reprisals against civilians after the army began working against it the year before.
In March, the United States branded the ADF a foreign terrorist organization. The group has previously declared allegiance to the Daesh terrorist group, although the UN says evidence linking it to other militant networks is scarce.
President Felix Tshisekedi declared a besieged state in the northern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Kivu and Ituri on May 1 in an attempt to curb growing attacks by militant groups.
Uganda announced earlier this month that it had agreed to share intelligence and coordinate operations against the rebels, but that it would not deploy troops in Congo.
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