At least 15 civilians die after an ADF attack in Ituri, DR Congo

June 17 (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least 15 civilians have been killed after a new Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attack on a village in Ituri province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Among the fatalities are five women and a one-year-old baby; the militia have kidnapped three children; In addition, they have burned about ten houses, the Radio Okapi station has published this Friday.

“Their operational capacity has decreased significantly but they still have the complicity of the majority of the Congolese. And so we betray all the movements of the military. Everything that happens is in complicity with the Congolese,” said the administrator of the Irumu territory. (Ituri), Colonel Siro Simba.

Last week another 15 people were killed by an ADF attack, this time in North Kivu province, and a few days earlier another assault by the same militia left some 20 dead in Ituri.

The ADF, a Ugandan group created in the 1990s that was especially active in the eastern DRC and accused of killing hundreds of civilians in this part of the country, suffered a split in 2019 after its leader swore allegiance to the jihadist group. Islamic State in Central Africa (ISCA), under whose banner it has operated ever since. The United Nations attributes more than 1,200 murders of civilians to them in 2021 alone.