The United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) announced Friday that the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group linked to the Islamic State, killed 89 civilians in attacks carried out over the past week in the Lubero region of eastern DRC.
MONUSCO said in a statement that the attacks, which it described as extremely bloody, occurred between November 13 and 19 in several areas of the Lubero region, north of North Kivu province. The attacks targeted the Baberi area and the town of Baswagha. Among the dead were 20 women and an unspecified number of children.
According to the UN mission, ADF militants killed at least 17 civilians, including women, in an attack on a Catholic Church-run health center in the town of Biambwe, and set fire to four wards containing patients. The statement added that other violations committed by the rebels included kidnappings and looting of medical supplies.
MONUSCO called on Kinshasa authorities to immediately launch independent investigations to identify the perpetrators of these massacres and their accomplices, and bring them to justice.
The Allied Democratic Forces initially emerged as a rebel force in Uganda, but has been based in the forests of neighboring Congo since the late 1990s. Since 2019, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks by this faction, which it calls “Islamic State – Central Africa Province.”
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been plagued by armed conflicts for decades, particularly in the east of the country.
