At least 27 civilians have been killed by members of a notorious rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the army and the Red Cross said.
The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), which monitors violence in the region through a team of experts on the ground, has posted on Twitter that at least 27 civilians were killed in Saturday’s attack by the Forces Allied Democrats (ADF).
“We heard bullets at dawn in the village of Beu Manyama,” Army spokesman Anthony Mualushayi told Agence France-Presse on Saturday. “By the time we arrived, it was too late because the enemy ADF had already killed more than a dozen of our fellow citizens with machetes.”
Described by Islamic State as its local subsidiary, the ADF has been accused of killing thousands of civilians in the turbulent east of the DRC.
In the early hours of Saturday’s attack in the Beni region of North Kivu province, soldiers pursued the attackers and “neutralized seven ADFs” and captured another, Mualushayi said.
Earlier on Saturday, local Red Cross chief Philippe Bonane had counted 24 civilian deaths and oversaw the transfer of bodies to the morgue.
The massacre comes after nearly a month of relative calm in Beni, where the Congolese and Ugandan armies have been conducting joint military operations against the ADF since late November.
On Friday, another Red Cross representative said that soldiers from the neighboring province of Ituri had found 17 beheaded bodies, which are also believed to have been victims of the ADF.
More than 120 armed groups are roaming the eastern DRC and civilian massacres are common.
Both Ituri and North Kivu have been under an official “state of siege” since May last year, and the army and police have replaced senior officials in an attempt to curb attacks by armed groups.
Despite this, the authorities have not been able to stop the massacres that are regularly carried out against civilians.