At least 36 people were killed in an attack on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday night, the latest in a series of massacres that has left hundreds dead.
The attack, in the village of Rwangoma, near Beni, the major town in the region, was was the deadliest attack in the area since November 2014 with the victims tied up and hacked to death.
Omar Kavota, the executive director at the Centre of Study for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights (that documents violence in North Kivu), told Reuters he had received reports of as many as 50 dead.
The attack has raised fears of the emergence of a new jihadist organisation in central Africa. For years now, one of various rebel groups operating there, the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces-National Association for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU), has been trying to uproot Christians from the north-east area of DRC through attacks, rape, looting, kidnap and murder – on an almost weekly basis.
ADF-NALU, originally rooted in a rebel movement to overthrow Uganda’s government and replace it with an Islamist fundamentalist state but forced to re-locate over the border into DRC, has been murdering local people, far from the attention of most of the world’s major media. While the National Association militants ostensibly ‘ended’ their fight in 2007, local bishops and civil society have repeatedly denounced the resurgence of violence still carried out in the name of ADF-NALU.
On Sunday, dozens of protesters gathered in Beni, carrying the body of one of those killed and chanting anti-government slogans. Only last week President Joseph Kabila visited the region and said he would work to bring about peace.
WWM has tried to get more detail about Saturday‘s attacks, but a local source explained that many have fled, internet cafes are closed and so it is difficult to ascertain more about the victims at this time.
