Jan 2 (Reuters) – Islamic State-linked rebels killed at least 15 people in three villages in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Lubero territory, two officials said on Friday, keeping up a pattern of lethal attacks targeting mostly civilians.
The Allied Democratic Forces began as an insurgent force in Uganda but has been based in the forests of neighbouring Congo since the late 1990s, and is recognised by Islamic State as an affiliate.
Congo’s army and Ugandan forces have pursued operations against the ADF, but the group’s raids persist.
Its latest attacks occurred on Thursday night in Lubero, part of North Kivu province. Nine civilians were killed in Kilonge, two civilians in Katanga and two civilians and two soldiers in Maendeleo, according to Macaire Sivikunula, chief of the Bapere locality where the villages are located.
“The ADF rebels killed most of the victims with bladed weapons,” although they also exchanged gunfire with soldiers in Maendeleo, he told Reuters.
Alain Kiwewa, Lubero’s military administrator, said on Friday afternoon that 16 people had been confirmed dead.
An army spokesperson, Lieutenant Marc Elongo, said Congolese troops were “pursuing the enemy”, without providing details.
Kakule Kagheni Samuel, head of civil society groups in Bapere, said the militants also burnt homes to the ground.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Central African country, known as MONUSCO, said in November that the ADF killed 89 civilians in a spate of strikes over the course of a week.
And in September, the ADF claimed responsibility for an attack that claimed the lives of more than 60 civilians at a funeral in eastern Congo.
Sivikunula said local officials were waiting for soldiers to secure the area before organising funerals for victims of the overnight attacks because “the ADF are cunning (and) can ambush civilians who try to organise this kind of activity.”
The ADF violence is separate from the war between Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels that killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands last year, prompting mediation by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and Qatar.
(Reporting by Congo newsroom; writing by Robbie Corey-Boulet; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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