Suspected Islamist insurgents killed at least 20 civilians in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo overnight, according to a local resident and an activist, who criticized the inability of forces Congolese and Ugandan women to stop the repeated massacres in the area.
The resident and activist attributed the late Sunday night attack in Kikura village to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan insurgent group that has killed thousands of civilians in eastern of the Congo since 2013.
Congolese and Ugandan troops launched joint operations against the ADF in late November, but attacks by the group, which has pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, have continued to kill dozens of civilians each month.
The assailants carried out the attack around 9 p.m. armed with machetes and also burned houses, said Odette Zawadi, the president of a local activist organization. Zawadi said 20 bodies have been recovered and the death toll could rise further.
“It seems that we no longer have confidence in these so-called joint operations. How can you explain that 20 people are killed in the presence of these two forces?” he told Reuters.
Claude Kalinde, a local resident, confirmed that 20 bodies had been recovered.
“We thought that the coalition of the Congolese and Ugandan armies would help us, but look how sad,” he said.
Capt. Antony Mwalushayi, a spokesman for the Congolese army, said soldiers in the area had been slow to learn of the attack as it had been carried out without firearms.
“We cannot get discouraged because the enemy’s objective is to discourage us, to separate us from the population,” he said.
A spokesman for the Ugandan army was not immediately available for comment.
The ADF began as an uprising in Uganda but has been based in the Congo since the late 1990s. It pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019, but United Nations investigators have found no evidence that the Islamic State controls its operations.