Eight other people beheaded in an ADF assault in a town near the border with Uganda
June 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Around 40 civilians have died in an attack carried out at dawn this Monday by alleged members of the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO) armed group against a camp for displaced persons located in the province of Ituri, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The head of the Baheme Badjere community, Jean-Richard Deddha Kondo, said that 41 people were killed with machetes and firearms, before adding that seven people have been injured and numerous houses have been set on fire.
“It is the provisional balance of the attack this morning,” he said in statements given to the Congolese news portal 7sur7, before adding that a group of soldiers deployed about four kilometers from the site have moved to the camp to “limit the damage.” .
It has also specified that most of the displaced persons who were in the camp have fled to the town of Bule, located three kilometers away. CODECO agreed ten days ago to end hostilities in the framework of a dialogue in which various armed groups active in the eastern DRC participated.
The armed group CODECO is predominantly made up of members of the Lendu community, following an increase in assaults since June 2019 and intercommunal clashes between the Lendu and the Hema in Ituri.
On the other hand, at least eight people were beheaded in an attack carried out on Sunday by alleged members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), linked to the jihadist group Islamic State, in an attack in the city of Kasindi, located in North Kivu, near from the border with uganda.
Witnesses quoted by the Congolese news portal Actualité have indicated that “the rebels forced the victims to leave their homes and executed them with machetes, axes and hammer blows.” “Most of the victims have been beheaded,” they have indicated.
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.
