The government of DRC condemned a “bomb attack visibly perpetrated by ADF terrorists”, the Allied Democratic Forces, active in the region.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
At least ten people were killed and thirty-nine injured, Sunday, January 15, in a bomb attack in a church in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), attributed by the authorities to a group armed affiliated with the Islamic State.
This “purely terrorist act” occurred in a Pentecostal Church (Evangelical Protestant) in Kasindi, a border town with Uganda in the Congolese province of North Kivu, explained the spokesman for the army DRC, Antony MUALUSHAYI. He reported on Sunday afternoon and thirty-nine injured and the arrest of a suspect of Kenyan nationality, adding that investigations were underway. A figure in civil society, Joel Kitausa, raised ten dead and fifty-eight injured.
The Government of DRC condemned, in a tweet of Ministry of Communication , “The bomb attack visibly perpetrated by ADF terrorists”, the Allied Democratic Forces (Allied Democratic Forces). The ADFs, Muslim rebels of Ugandan origin, are active in the North Kivu and south of Ituri, another Congolese province. They are among the deadliest of some 120 armed groups present in the east of the DRC, many of which are the heritage of the regional conflicts which broke out at the turn of the XXI e century. These groups seek to control territories for ethnic reasons and/or to extract the rich soil resources, often encouraged and financed by neighboring countries.
North Kivu and Ituri placed in siege by siege by siege by siege by siege by siege by siege Félix Tshisekedi
The ADF are accused of having massacred thousands of Congolese civilians and of having perpetrated bomb attacks in Uganda. In 2021, the United States placed ADF in its list of “foreign terrorist organizations”, in connection with the Islamic State group. Since the same year, a Congolese-Ugandan joint military operation has started to target ADF in Congolese territory. But the attacks continued.
The ADF “continued their geographic expansion” in the DRC, killing there since April 2022 “at least 370 civilians”, according to a report by the group of experts from the UN Security Council on the DRC on December 16 . According to this group of experts, they also “opted for more visible and more deadly operations”, using improvised explosive devices “in an urban environment”.
Since May 2021, North Kivu and Ituri have been placed in “siege” by Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi, to try to stop violence, military officials replacing civil administrators. But this exceptional measure also failed to stem attacks.
For a week, at least sixty civilians have been killed in Ituri. Wednesday, “eight civilians” were “murdered by the ADF rebels” in the territory of Irumu, according to Dieudonné Lossa, coordinator of the civil society of Ituri. The other victims were after attacks attributed to CODECO (Cooperative for the Development of the Congo), a militia of several thousand men who claims to protect the Lendu tribe, against the Hema tribe and the national army.
m. Lossa regrets that the workforce of the DRC armed forces were recently “reduced” to Ituri, to “bring back” to North Kivu to fight another armed group, the M23, Tutsi rebellion sustained according to Kinshasa by Rwanda.