About 20 people have been killed in an attack in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), with sources blaming rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group.
“The enemy ADF [Allied Democratic Forces] ambushed farmers at around 4pm on Friday near the village of Enebula,” local civil society leader Patrick Mukohe said.
Enebula said he had counted 21 bodies of men and women at the site of the massacre, about 30km west of the town of Oicha, in North Kivu province.
Photo: AFP
Jules Kambale, who works in the Oicha hospital morgue, said it had received 19 bodies.
Charles Ehuta Omeanga, the regional military administrator, confirmed the attack, which he attributed to “ADF terrorists,” but said he was not in a position to provide a definitive toll.
In a video shared on social media, and authenticated by Mukohe, a crowd surrounded the body of a man tied to a wooden frame after his throat was slit. The body was placed in a tarpaulin and added to a pile of blood-stained body bags.
The ADF, originally insurgents in Uganda, gained a foothold in eastern DR Congo in the 1990s and has since been accused of killing thousands of civilians, becoming the deadliest of scores of outlawed forces in the deeply troubled region.
Since 2019, some ADF attacks in eastern DRC have been claimed by the Islamic State, which describes the group as its local offshoot, the Islamic State Central Africa Province.
When the bodies of the latest victims arrived at the Oicha morgue, some youths tried to block the nearby national road in protest. They were quickly dispersed by the police who, according to one civil society source, fired bullets in the process.
“The situation here is catastrophic,” the source said.
The UN mission in the country, MONUSCO, on Thursday said that more than 30 people had been killed by the ADF in neighboring Ituri province earlier in the week.
Last month, the US offered a reward of up to US$5 million for information concerning ADF leader Seka Musa Baluku.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS