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BENI - At least eight people were killed and 30 taken hostage in an attack in Beni, in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Vatican News reported that several villages in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the surrounding area were attacked on Tuesday, 30th January 2024 by armed men who executed civilians with bladed weapons.

The attacks have been attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group affiliated with the so-called Islamic State.

Five of these were in prayer in a church belonging to the Branhamist Pentecostal community.

"Eight bodies of civilians killed by ADF rebels have been deposited at the morgue of the Oicha hospital, including five Branhmanist Christians killed during worship," said Nicolas Kikuku, the mayor of the Oicha Commune, a city in the Beni territory.

"The enemies executed them. Several other people are missing,” Kikuku said. Darius Syahira, the local civil society spokesman, confirmed the attack and stated that the bodies were in the morgue.

Other local sources reported that 30 people were taken hostage by the assailants, who are known to make incursions into Eastern DRC, burning houses, killing residents, and stealing goods.

On Saturday 27th January 2024, other sources reported 32 people killed, including five parishioners, beheaded in a church, during attacks in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

These attacks, too, were attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces ADF and the Islamic State group.

The provinces of North Kivu and Ituri have been under a state of emergency since 2021, a measure that replaced civilian authorities with military administration to combat armed groups.

The ADF has been present in eastern DRC since the mid-1990s, and has killed several thousand civilians.

In 2019, the rebels pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), which describes them as its "Central Africa Province."

In late 2021, Kampala and Kinshasa launched a joint military operation against the ADF, named "Shujaa," but the rebels continued their atrocities. 

In December 2023, they were accused of launching two attacks in western Uganda, killing 13 people.

The DRC, coming out of a tense electoral period, has experienced a few weeks of calm in its eastern provinces, which have faced chronic instability for over three decades.

However, deadly attacks have now resumed in the Beni territory, where five civilians were killed on January 23 in an attack claimed by the ADF.

Over 42 students were confirmed dead in June 2023 following a gruesome attack by ADF rebels on a school near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. An unknown number of students have been abducted.

President Yoweri Museveni has asked the ADF to surrender or get killed as the Uganda Peoples Defence Force has an agreement with the DRC government to hunt them anywhere.

In 2021, the ADF was accused of orchestrating deadly bombings in the Ugandan capital of Kampala that killed six people. Uganda sent troops into eastern Congo, where they remain battling the insurgent group.