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A child among those killed on their way back from a weekly market in North Kivu province.
Attackers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) killed at least 16 civilians as they returned from a weekly market, according to a report citing medical and local sources.
Thursday night’s ambush occurred on a highway between the towns of Maimoya and Chani-chani, some 40 km (25 miles) from the town of Beni in the province of North Kivu.
Jérôme Munyambethe, head of the Oicha city hospital, told AFP news agency that six women and a child – all shot – were among the victims.
“We have 16 bodies in the hospital morgue,” said Nicolas Kikuku, mayor of the city, adding that nine other wounded had been taken to hospital for treatment.
Fighters belonging to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – the deadliest of an estimated 122 armed groups in mineral-rich eastern DRC, many of which are the legacy of two regional wars from 1996 to 2003 – carry out frequent attacks in the Oicha region.
“The ambush is the work of the ADF who roam the area. They also fired a rocket, ”said Lewis Saliboko, a representative of grassroots groups in Oicha.
“It was the ADF enemy that once again attacked peace-loving people,” Kikuku said.
The ADF, which first appeared in western Uganda before establishing their base in eastern DRC in the mid-1990s, do not claim responsibility for the attacks.
The Catholic Church in the DRC says the ADF has massacred nearly 6,000 civilians since 2013, with the toll increasing sharply since 2019.
The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a respected US-based violence monitor in eastern DRC, accuses the ADF of more than 1,200 deaths in the Beni region alone since 2017.
On March 10, the United States called the ADF a “foreign terrorist organization” and declared that its leader Musa Baluku had pledged allegiance to the armed group ISIL (ISIL).
But experts are still unsure of the extent of the links between ADF and ISIS.
In May, the President of the DRC, Félix Tshisekedi, proclaimed a “state of siege” in North Kivu and in the neighboring province of Ituri in order to fight growing insecurity and intensify the fight against armed groups.
As part of this movement, senior civilian officials have been replaced by army officers.
But Saliboko, the representative of the grassroots groups, complained that the new measures had failed to curb the attacks.
“What good is this state of siege while we continue to have massacres?” he said. “There are no operations, there are no additional forces.”
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