ADF overspill attack blamed for six DR Congo deaths

CONFLICT

An attack which killed six in DR Congo's north-eastern Ituri province Wednesday was the work of an notorious militia based near the Ugandan border, their first known incursion in the area, military sources said.

The attack left one soldier and five militiamen dead while two doctors were abducted, the sources in the region said.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) -- forced out of Uganda in the mid 1990s -- are regularly accused by DRC authorities of attacking army positions in the neighbouring province of North Kivu.

To date, attacks in Ituri have tended to be blamed on the Lord's Resistance Army, but the latest assault is being seen as the ADF extending its sphere of influence.

"For their first attack in the province of Ituri, the ADF came in force. We killed five and captured one. One soldier has succumbed to his injuries," army spokesman lieutenant Jules Ngongo told AFP.

"These ADF who came from North Kivu targeted Tchadi village, in the territory of Irumu, bordering the neighbouring province of North Kivu."

Nestor Banoba, the head of a local civil association in the village targeted, said three people were abducted along with the doctors.

Last month, the Islamic State group for the first time claimed to be behind an attack on a Congolese army position in the North Kivu village of Komanda.

The ADF is a shadowy Islamist-rooted group that rose in western Uganda in 1995 under the leadership of Jamil Mukulu, a Christian turned Muslim.

The ADF have notably been blamed for a 2014  massacre of hundreds of civilians in the North Kivu region of Beni as well as the killings of 22 UN peacekeepers and dozens of DRC troops over the past 18 months.

Over that period, however, the group has made no demands nor has any figurehead publicly emerged.

One Congolese officer, Muhindo Akili Mundos, who commanded a force targeting the group from August 2014 to June 2015, has been accused by the UN of supporting an ADF "sub-group" known as ADF-Mwalika.

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