IS-linked ADF fighters kill over 70 in DRC attack

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Fighters linked to the Islamic State group killed 71 people in an overnight attack in the Democratic Republic of Congo's east, local and security sources said Tuesday.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group founded by former Ugandan rebels who pledged allegiance to IS in 2019, struck the village of Ntoyo in North Kivu province while residents were attending a funeral, the sources said.

It follows a string of deadly raids by the mostly Muslim militia across North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri province to the north in July and August, killing more than a hundred civilians and shattering several months of relative calm in the region.

"For the moment, we have a toll of 71 dead," Macaire Sivikunula, an official in the Bapere sector that includes Ntoyo, told AFP. Security sources confirmed that tally to AFP.

"Most of the people who were killed were at a funeral," said Samuel Kagheni, a local civil society leader, adding that at least 14 homes were set alight in the assault.

Some of the victims "were burned alive in their homes, and others who tried to flee were shot dead", Kagheni said.

Four other people were wounded by the ADF militants, he added.

The ADF had already killed more than 40 people in attacks on several settlements in the Bapere sector on August 13 and 14.

Just over two weeks before, the group triggered international outrage after killing dozens of worshippers, including women and children, in a raid on a Catholic church in the town of Komanda.

According to an AFP tally, the group's assaults have left more than 150 civilians dead since July across Ituri and North Kivu, which border Uganda and Rwanda respectively.

Lure of gold

For more than 30 years the mineral-rich eastern DRC has been a battleground between various armed groups, backed at times by foreign powers, vying for control of its many mines.

Both the Ugandan and Congolese armies have sent troops to the region to tackle the ADF, whose members have killed thousands of civilians across the DRC's unrest-plagued northeast.

But that joint operation has pushed the ADF into isolated and tough-to-access regions which the military often struggles to reach in time, leaving civilians at the mercy of the group's fighters.

Located in Lubero territory, Bapere's rich veins of gold have drawn various local militias and criminal gangs.

Besides the killing of civilians, the ADF has also been involved in the pillaging and smuggling of agricultural products from neighbouring Beni territory.

Though the Ugandan and Congolese armies have not managed to put an end to the attacks on civilians, their joint operation has succeeded in bringing some security to the main roads to Uganda since its launch in 2021.

North Kivu province is also home to the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, which has seized swathes of the Congolese east since taking up arms again in 2021.

However, the M23 has limited its expansion northward, avoiding the areas patrolled by Ugandan troops.