Beni,
DR Congo – Fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia killed
seven civilians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, just days
after another massacre, local officials and police said.
About 60 ADF fighters carried out
the attack at Makeke, killing five men and two women, local official Mapengo
Shabani told AFP. Makeke lies 32km north of Beni, in Ituri province, near the
border with Uganda.
“The attack happened in
broad daylight,” he added. “These terrorists also pillaged five
shops. So far, we have not recorded any missing persons.”
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This latest attack was first
reported by Major Losendjola Morisho, chief of police at the neighbouring town
of Mangina.
Morisho also reported that
another 12 bodies had been discovered near Beni, in the neighbouring province
of North Kivu, two days after an ADF attack that killed eight people and left
around 20 missing.
“The 12 bodies found today
were victims of Friday’s ADF attack,” Morisho told AFP.
Wracked by militia violence
On Friday, ADF militia fighters slit the throats of eight people in Mangina commune, prompting hundreds of
villagers to flee the area.
It was just the latest massacre
blamed on the ADF, which has carried out reprisal attacks on civilians in
response to a military crackdown that began in October.
Militia violence has wracked
eastern DR Congo for years, a legacy of the two Congo Wars in the 1990s, but
the ADF has been blamed for most of the recent attacks.
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The region around Beni,
straddling the North Kivu and Ituri provinces, is the epicentre of the ADF
campaign. Activists say more than 300 people have been killed there since
October.
On January 28, 36 civilians were
killed in an attack in Oicha, also in Beni, part of the ADF’s revenge attacks
on civilians.
The ADF, blamed for the deaths of
more than 1 000 civilians in Beni since October 2014, began as an
Islamist-rooted rebel group in Uganda that opposed President Yoweri Museveni.
It fell back into eastern DRC in
1995 during the Congo Wars and appears to have halted raids inside Uganda. Its
recruits today are of various nationalities.