Muslim Hate in the Congo
CAIRO, Oct 23, 2021 (Reuters) - Islamic State
claimed responsibility for an attack on a village this week in eastern
Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a statement published on Friday on
its affiliated Telegram channels.
Residents of Kalembo
village told Reuters that rebels killed 16 people and torched houses in an
attack on Wednesday that a local human rights group blamed on the Allied
Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed group active in the region.
The statement said Islamic State was
responsible for the attack in the village about 40 km (25 miles) east of the
city of Beni.
The ADF has operated in the dense forests near
the Ugandan border for more than three decades and began killing civilians in
large numbers in 2014.
The group has publicly aligned itself with Islamic
State, but a June report from the United Nations found no evidence of direct
support from Islamic State to the ADF.
19 civilians killed in DR Congo by Islamic
State-linked militants
AFP
August 29, 2021
Nineteen civilians in the eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo were burned and hacked to death on Friday by Ugandan Islamist
rebels, a local official said on Saturday.
Fourteen bodies were found on Saturday, Kakule Kalunga told AFP. A local
chief said they were discovered by Red Cross workers who went into nearby
forest to look for those missing after the attack on Kasanzi
village in the Beni territory of North Kivu.
Beni lies at the heart of an area where the
Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) - linked to Islamic State - have mounted deadly
attacks in spite of emergency security measures by President Felix Tshisekedi.
The "19 people were killed by the rebels
who plague the territory of Beni, the ADF," Kalunga
said, adding that the victims were killed by "bladed weapons and
fire", and that houses were also set ablaze.
In a statement on Friday, Meleki
Mulala, a spokesperson for the New Civil Society organisation in Rwenzori, deplored the absence of military
personnel around Beni.
Regional military sources contacted by AFP on
Saturday did not immediately comment.
Since May, the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri have been under a state of siege, replacing civilian
authorities with army and police officers to fight armed groups.
Earlier this month, a contingent of US special
operations forces arrived in the area to help the Congolese army in their fight
against the ADF, US and Congolese sources said at the time.
The size of the contingent was unknown but
around a dozen soldiers could be seen in official photos of a meeting between
Tshisekedi and a delegation led by US ambassador to the Democratic Republic of
Congo Mike Hammer.
At least 16 killed in road ambush by suspected
militants in eastern Congo
BENI, Congo, July 23, 2021 (Reuters) - At least
16 people, including six women and two children, have been killed in a
suspected Islamist militant attack on a remote road in northeast Democratic
Republic of Congo, the director of a local hospital said on Friday.
The attack took place on a road near the town
of Oicha, around 390 km (242 miles) north of the
eastern provincial capital of Goma. Nine others were injured, with three,
including a baby, in critical condition, according to hospital staff.
Survivors blamed the assault on the Allied
Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist militant group that claims links to
Islamic State. They have been accused of killing thousands of people since
2014, mostly in similarly remote areas.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility,
and the ADF could not be reached.
Maman Masika
Kahindo, a local farmer, said she was travelling in a
minibus with her 11-year-old son when fighters dressed in ADF fatigues fired on
the crowded vehicle and killed her son.
"They fired several bullets and the driver
immediately died," Kahindo said, wearing
bandages over her chest where she said she had been grazed by gunfire.
"They took him out of the vehicle and shot my child in the head."
Janvier Kasayiro, who
heads a local coalition of civil society groups, also blamed Islamist
militants, adding that several people who had been travelling in the same bus
as Kahindo were still missing.
The government declared martial law in North
Kivu and the neighbouring Ituri
province at the beginning of May, in an attempt to quell a surge in violence
that the military largely attributes to the ADF.
But the number of civilians killed in such
attacks has only increased since then, according to the Kivu Security Tracker,
which maps unrest in eastern Congo.
At least 55
killed in eastern Congo massacres, U.N. says
May 31, 2021
At least 55
people were killed overnight in two attacks on villages in eastern Congo, the
United Nations said on Monday, in potentially the worst night of violence the
area has seen in at least four years.
The army and a
local civil rights group blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist
armed group, for raiding the village of Tchabi and a
camp for displaced people near Boga, another village. Both are close to the
border of Uganda.
Houses were
burned and civilians abducted, the U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said in
a statement.
Albert Basegu, the head of a civil rights group in Boga, told
Reuters by telephone that he had been alerted to the attack by the sound of
cries at a neighbour's house.
"When I
got there I found that the attackers had already
killed an Anglican pastor and his daughter was also seriously wounded," Basegu said.
The Kivu Security
Tracker (KST), which has mapped unrest in restive eastern Congo since June
2017, said on Twitter the wife of a local chief was among the dead. It did not
attribute blame for the killings.
"It's the
deadliest day ever recorded by the KST," said Pierre Boisselet,
the research group's coordinator.
The ADF is
believed to have killed more than 850 people in 2020, according to the United
Nations, in a spate of reprisal attacks on civilians after the army began
operations against it the year before.
In March the
United States labelled the ADF a foreign terrorist organisation.
The group has in the past proclaimed allegiance to Islamic State, although the
United Nations says evidence linking it to other Islamist militant networks is
scant.
President Felix
Tshisekedi declared a state of siege in Congo's North Kivu and Ituri provinces on May 1 in an attempt to curb increasing
attacks by militant groups.
Uganda
announced earlier this month that it had agreed to share intelligence and
coordinate operations against the rebels but that it would not be deploying
troops in Congo.
Suspected Islamists kill 23 civilians in
eastern Congo
By Reuters Staff
March 31, 2021
BENI, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) -
Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 23 civilians in an overnight raid
on a village near Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the provincial
governor’s office said on Wednesday.
The death toll was still provisional as the
search for bodies continued in Manyama-Moliso, north
of the city of Beni, the North Kivu governor’s office said on Twitter.
It blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a
Ugandan militia active in eastern Congo since the 1990s. The authorities have
blamed the ADF for the deaths of hundreds of people since 2014.
The group has stepped up reprisals against
civilians since Congo’s army launched a fresh offensive in late 2019.
The United States designated the ADF a foreign
terrorist organisation earlier this month, accusing
it of links to Islamic State.
U.N. experts in Congo, however, have not found
evidence of a direct relationship between the two groups.
Two of the assailants were also killed when the
army responded, the governor’s office added.
Forty-Six Civilians Feared Killed in Eastern
Congo Attack, Official Says
Jan. 14, 2021
KINSHASA (REUTERS) - Forty-six civilians
are reported to have been killed in an attack by suspected Islamist militants
on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a senior provincial
official said on Thursday.
Local security forces have been dispatched to
the village in Irumu territory to investigate,
provincial interior minister Adjio Gidi said by phone.
He said the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) were
behind the raid. The Ugandan armed group is believed to have carried out a
string of massacres in eastern Congo, killing more than 1,000 civilians since
the start of 2019, according to U.N. figures.
After being alerted to the latest violence,
troops went to the village and are in the process of recovering bodies, local
army spokesman Jules Ngongo said. He did not say how
many had been killed.
Congo’s eastern borderlands with Uganda,
Rwanda and Burundi are home to a constellation of over 100 different militias,
many remnants of its brutal civil wars that officially ended in 2003.
On Sunday, unidentified attackers killed at
least six rangers in an ambush in eastern Congo’s Virunga National Park,
a sanctuary for endangered mountain gorillas.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for
many suspected ADF attacks in the past, although U.N. experts have not been
able to confirm any direct link between the two groups.
At least 25 killed by rebels in eastern Congo;
some beheaded
A local official says at least 25 people have
been killed in an attack on New Year’s Eve by rebels in Congo’s
eastern Beni territory
By JEAN-YVES KAMALE
Associated Press
January 1, 2021
KINSHASA, Congo -- At least 25 people were
killed in an attack on New Year’s Eve by rebels in Congo’s eastern Beni
territory, local officials said Friday.
Farmers had gone to the fields in the village
of Tingwe when they were attacked by Allied
Democratic Forces rebels, according to the representative of the governor in
the region, Sabiti Njiamoja.
Some of the bodies were found by rescue teams
in the bushes on Friday, he said.
“We are in mourning,” Njiamoja said.
Local civil society representative Bravo Muhindo confirmed more than 25 dead and said many had been
beheaded.
Other people were kidnapped, Muhindo said.
Residents in Beni and surrounding villages have
been calling for increased security as the ADF rebels stage attacks in the
region.
The ADF originated in neighboring Uganda and
has long been a threat in eastern Congo. The Islamic State group has claimed
some attacks carried out by ADF rebels, but the exact relationship between the
groups is not clear.
A Congolese military campaign was launched
against the rebels last year and fighters have since dispersed and fled into
various parts of eastern Congo, where dozens of armed groups fight over control
of the mineral-rich land.
Rebels have responded to the military offensive
with increased attacks, killing more than 800 people last year.
Dozens killed in eastern DRC in latest attacks
blamed on ADF
Twenty-nine people were killed in Virunga park
and at least six civilians slaughtered in nearby village of Kokola,
officials say.
17 Nov 2020
aljazeera
Some three dozen people
have been killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s)
troubled east, local officials have said, blaming a notorious armed group that
has been accused of killing hundreds of civilians over the past year.
Twenty-nine bodies were found in the Virunga
National Park after being “executed en
masse”, Jean-Bosco Sebishimbo, the interior
minister of North Kivu province, said on Tuesday.
He added that six civilians were also killed
during “an armed attack” in the nearby village of Kokola earlier on Tuesday.
The United Nations Organization Stabilization
Mission in the DRC confirmed that six people were killed in Kokola,
while the provincial government “strongly” condemned “this
latest slaughter of civilians”.
Sebishimbo said the first
indications about the perpetrators point towards the Allied Democratic Forces
(ADF), an armed group that is “very active in the area”.
A security source told Reuters news agency it
was suspected, based on the state of decomposition of the victims’ bodies
and their location, that the victims were among the more than 1,400 men who
escaped from Beni prison when it was attacked by suspected ADF fighters on
October 19.
Both attacks occurred in North Kivu’s
Beni territory, where 811 civilians have been killed since October 31 last
year, according to the Kivu Security Tracker.
It was on that date that the Congolese army
launched a large operation against the ADF’s leaders and bases in the
jungle around the city of Beni.
The militia responded by intensifying a
campaign of massacres in rural areas, seeking to dissuade civilians from
collaborating with the military, experts say.
“The horror of this macabre new discovery
cannot leave anyone indifferent,” said the European Union’s
ambassador to the DRC, Marc Chataigner.
The ADF, which has been active in the region
since the 1990s, is one of more than 100 militias in the eastern provinces of
the vast country.
More than 1,000 civilians have been killed by
the ADF in 2019-2020, according to UN figures.
The ADF has never claimed responsibility for
attacks. But since April 2019, several of its assaults have been claimed by the
so-called Islamic State’s Central Africa Province, without providing
proof.
58
killed in fresh DR Congo attacks
(AFP)
Published September 10, 2020
Fifty-eight people have
been killed in the eastern DR Congo province of Ituri,
the province’s interior minister told AFP on Thursday, attributing the
massacres to a notorious militia.
Twenty-three people were
killed in Irumu territory in southern Ituri on Tuesday, followed by 35 there on Thursday, said
minister Adjio Gidi.
“Large numbers of the
population” have fled their homes, he told AFP.
He blamed the Allied Democratic
Forces, which originated in the 1990s as a Ugandan Muslim rebel group.
“It was ADF, fleeing
military pressure in (neighbouring) North Kivu
province, namely in (the) Beni (region),” Gidi
said.
“Our forces are
already in the area and are in contact with the enemy,” he said.
Hundreds of civilians have
died at the hands of the ADF since the armed forces launched a crackdown in
North Kivu last November.
The latest attacks took
place in a heavily forested area called Tshabi.
“People were killed
with every sort of weapon, knives, guns,” a member of the Nyali community in Tshabi,
Richard Balengilyao, told AFP.
The search effort was being
complicated by thick forest, he said.
“Right now, the Congolese army, supported by local people, is
still looking for victims in the forest,” he said.
“Seventeen people are listed as disappeared, but they have almost
definitely been kidnapped.”
The ADF is one of more than 100 armed groups that trouble the eastern
provinces of the vast Democratic Republic of Congo, many of which are the
legacy of full-fledged wars of the 1990s.
The northern part of Ituri this year has seen
brutal killings in the territory of Djugu, blamed on
an ethnically-based militia called the Cooperative for the Development of
Congo, or CODECO.
A senior delegation from the central government was scheduled to arrive
in Ituri on Friday to discuss the province’s
security problems.
More than 30 civilians killed in
attacks in eastern DR Congo
30/01/2020
Thirty-six people have been killed in a suspected militia attack
in the eastern DR Congo region of Beni, where hundreds have died in violence
since November, a local official said Wednesday.
Congolese troops have been carrying out a military operation on an
armed group in the east of the country --
long plagued by various militias -- and militiamen have responded with a series
of massacresagainst civilians.
"They were all hacked to death. This brings (the toll) to 36
bodies," local Beni governor Donat Kibwana told AFP, updating casualties from Tuesday's
attack.
Officials had earlier reported 15 fatalities.
Two people with skull fractures caused by machetes have been
admitted to the hospital in Oicha for surgery, an AFP
reporter there said.
The main attack took place late Tuesday in Manzingi,
a village 20 kilometres (12 miles) northwest from Oicha, while a pastor was also killed in nearby Eringeti.
According to a toll compiled by a civil society organisation, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), 265 people
have now been killed in the Beni region since the army began its crackdown on
the armed group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), on October 30.
The massacres seem to be a tactic by the ADF to frighten the
population into silence, local commentators say.
The group has also disrupted operations to curb an outbreak of
Ebola in North Kivu province.
Tuesday's massacre occurred to the west of the ADF's usual area of
operations, which is closer to the Ugandan border.
The army offensive, unfolding in thick forest and jungle, has led
to what the military say is the capture of the group's headquarters and the
killing of five of its six leaders.
Brutal militia
The ADF, blamed for the deaths of more than a thousand civilians
in Beni since October 2014, began as an Islamist-rooted rebel group in Uganda
that opposed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
It fell back into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1995 during
the Congo Wars and appears to have halted raids inside Uganda. Its recruits
today are people of various nationalities.
UN experts estimated the ADF in 2018 to number around 450 fighters.
A report to the UN Security Council last week said the ADF seemed
to follow an extreme Islamist ideology, but there is no information on whether
the group had links with international jihadist groups.
The spate of massacres has become a major challenge for President
Felix Tshisekedi, who took office a year ago last Friday.
In November, angry protests erupted in the city of Beni, the
region's administrative hub, as citizens accused the UN peacekeeping force in
DR Congo of failing to protect them.
Tshisekedi, in his first state-of-the-nation address to Congress,
last month said he had changed the army command in Beni and sent 22,000 troops
to the region.
(AFP)
43 dead in Congo after group with
links to Islamic State go door-to-door in killing spree
A human rights group says at least 11 people are dead in the
latest of a series of rebel attacks in eastern Congo, bringing to 43 the number
killed in the assaults.
December 16, 2019
Associated Press
Rebels with apparent links to the Islamic State group have killed
at least 43 people in eastern Congo over the weekend in a series of attacks
carried out in response to a new military offensive in the area, a rights group
said Monday.
Rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces in some cases went
door-to-door shooting their victims dead, according to a Congolese human rights
group known by its French acronym, CEPADHO.
The rebels have been trying to pit the civilian population against
the army so that people demand the military action be stopped, said Omar Kavotha, president of the rights organization. Insecurity
in the area already prompted demonstrators to protest late last month by
setting fire to the town hall.
The deadly weekend violence targeted an area in eastern Congo that
is at the heart of the Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 2,200 people
since August, 2018.
“These attacks will certainly paralyze the Ebola response teams,” said Dr. Pierre Celestin Adikey,
who coordinates the effort to control the disease in the Beni region. “The
movement of the population becomes difficult to control.”
Other armed groups in the area such as the Mai Mai
militias also may take advantage of the insecurity to carry out attacks of
their own, he said.
The medical effort to control the second deadliest Ebola outbreak
in history has been severely hampered since the start by the presence of so
many armed groups in eastern Congo.
Health teams have at times been unable to safely get to areas to
carry out vaccinations of those at highest risk of contracting the deadly
virus. Without the ability to react quickly, Ebola has continued to spread.
Community mistrust of the health workers has only further deepened the problem.
The latest burst of attacks began late Friday when ADF rebels
attacked Beni city, killing six. The militants then spread the violence to
several communities surrounding Beni.
Late Sunday, rebels went door-to-door killing people in Kamango, the human rights group said.
The Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, originated in Uganda and has
long been a threat in neighboring eastern Congo. More recently, the Islamic
State group has claimed attacks carried out by ADF rebels though the exact
relationship between the two is not entirely clear.
Suspected
Islamists kill at least 19 in latest east Congo attack
NOVEMBER 27, 2019
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters)
- Suspected Islamist rebels have killed at least 19 people in east Congo, an
official said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of attacks causing anger at
the perceived inaction of the army and U.N. troops.
The raid occurred overnight in the village of
Maleki, near the city of Oicha
in a forested region near the Ugandan border, said Donat
Kibwana, the administrator of Beni territory.
Kibwana blamed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a jihadist rebel
group originally from Uganda that has operated for decades in Congo. They have
killed at least 80 people in 14 raids since the army launched an operation
against them late last month, according to U.N figures.
He said that many family members of the victims
were afraid to return to the scene for fear of being attacked, but that an
initial search had found 19 people dead.
“This assessment remains provisional as the
search continues,” Kibwana
told Reuters by phone.
ISIS
claims first attack in DR Congo, saying it killed soldiers near Uganda border
JOANNE
STOCKER
APRIL 18, 2019
THE DEFENSE POST
Islamic State on Thursday, April 18 claimed that it killed Congolese soldiers
in an attack in Kamango near the border between
Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
A
message posted by its Amaq propaganda agency said
there were Congolese army “dead and wounded” following an attack by ISIS
fighters in the town of Kamango near the border.
In
a later statement, ISIS said “soldiers of the Caliphate” had attacked an army
base in the village of Bovata, roughly 5 km (3 miles)
from Komango in Beni region, “where they clashed with
small and medium weapons.” Three Congolese army
soldiers were killed and five others injured, the group claimed.
If
confirmed, it would be the first attack in DR Congo that ISIS central has
acknowledged.
Citing
U.N. peacekeeping and civil society sources, Reuters reported that two
Congolese soldiers and a civilian were killed in clashes in Bovata
on Tuesday. The sources said witnesses had blamed the Allied Democratic Forces
for the attack.
ISIS
ascribed the attack to “Central Africa Province,” the
first time the group has named an affiliate in the region. As in some other
areas, Islamic State did not have an official wilayat,
or province, in DR Congo, but had tentative links to the Allied Democratic
Forces, a Ugandan-led militant group founded in 1995 with the stated goal of
overthrowing the Ugandan government and creating an Islamic state.
Some time after 2012,
the ADF adopted the Madina at Tauheed
Wau Mujahedeen (MTM) – the City of Monotheism and
Holy warriors, according to the Congo Research Group, which has argued the ADF
has been “making a tentative attempt to align itself with other militant
Islamist groups.”
The
ADF operates in the border area in the DRC’s North Kivu province, an area where
other armed groups are also active. The government has often blamed the ADF for
killings, robberies and kidnappings, but numerous other armed groups operate in
the region and sometimes it is unclear who the true assailants are.
The
ADF is thought to have killed at least 700 civilians and more than 20 United
Nations peacekeepers.
The ADF was believed to be behind an attack that killed seven
people on February 8, was blamed for killing 10 soldiers and civilians on
January 9, and nine people in an attack on January 9, all in the Beni region of
North Kivu.
Dozens killed as Islamist violence erupts again in eastern DRC
November 3, 2017
By World Watch Monitor
After a period of relative calm, violence has resumed in eastern DRC. Various
attacks by armed groups, including the radical Islamic group Muslim Defense
International (MDI), formerly known as the Allied Democratic Forces, have
claimed dozens lives among civilians in September and October.
In one recent attack on 26 October, suspected MDI militants stormed the Masiani neighbourhood of Beni.
Local sources say the militants were hiding in the neighbourhood,
waiting for nightfall to attack the local population, but that a soldier
discovered them and immediately alerted security forces. The rebels then
immediately burst into action and attacked the city. Clashes with the military
led to at least six deaths (one soldier, five civilians).
A foreign missionary in the area described a chaotic situation, which caused
fear among residents: “When we arrived we could not
get into our neighbourhood. It was a real
battlefield. Bombs, gunfire and people running. Large calibre
shells are everywhere. A thousand or so people fled the area towards Beni,” he said.
In the early hours of Friday 27 October, unidentified gunmen also attacked the Nyankunde Evangelical hospital in Beni, situated on the
Beni-Butembo road. Local sources say the attackers woke up the director of the
hospital at about 1am, and forced him to lie down on the floor. They told him
to give them all the money he kept with him.
Other medical personnel were also ordered to lie on the floor. The assailants
looted money, some medicine and about 40 mobile phones belonging to the
patients, carers and nurses.
They also beat up some of the nurses and patients at the hospital and left just
before security forces arrived.
Earlier in October dozens were killed, including two UN peacekeepers, following
raids attributed to MDI militants and clashes with the army backed up by UN
troops. Some 11 civilians were killed when a convoy was ambushed between Kamango and Beni on the evening of Saturday 7 October. Most
of the victims had their throats slit with machetes. More than 20 others were
kidnapped, and their decomposed bodies were found a week later and buried on 15
October.
Violence in the volatile province of North Kivu claimed more than 1,000 lives
between October 2014 and May 2016, according to local NGOs.
The Congolese government has always attributed responsibility for such attacks
to MDI militants. But a recent report by the Congo Research Group, an
independent group linked with New York University, cast doubt on that
assessment.
The report – the result of over two years of research and 245 interviews,
including many with perpetrators – claims to uncover “a more complex” and “more
disturbing” reality.
The report, ‘Mass Killings in Beni Territory: Political Violence, Cover Ups,
and Cooptation’, attributes some of the blame to the Congolese army,
specifically naming one commanding officer, General Muhindo
Akili Mundos.
The recent upsurge of violence coincides with social unrest as protesters
demand the departure of President Joseph Kabila, whose constitutional mandate expired
in December 2016. On Monday (30 October), some activists, members of LUCHA (Lutte pour le changement
/Struggle for change), marched in the streets of Goma, the North Kivu provincial
capital, chanting, in French, “Joseph Kabila must go because his mandate has
ended”. At least five people were killed in clashes between protesters and
security forces, although some sources report as many as 30 deaths.
DRC has been in political turmoil since December 2016, when President Kabila’s second and last mandate expired without fresh
elections.
The San Silvestro Agreement, mediated by Catholic Bishops, on 31 December
provided for the establishment of a national unity government aimed at leading
the country to new elections by 2017. But analysts now say it is impossible to
meet the deadline as the national elections body, the CENI (Commission Electorale Nationale Independante), said elections can only be held 504 days
after the end of voter registration.
Some have accused the government of masterminding the violence in the east of
the country and the central province of Kasai, with the aim of creating a
climate of instability which will serve as a pretext for President Kabila to
stay in power.
Islamist Extremists Attack Churches, Terrorise Nuns
In Bid To Sabotage Church's Peace Mission In The Congo
Hazel Torres
24 February 2017
Christian Today
Islamist extremism is bringing death and destruction not only in the Middle
East but in other parts of the world as well.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
formerly Zaire, in Central Africa, Islamist extremists have been targeting
churches in what a top Roman Catholic official believes is a deliberate effort
to "sabotage the church's mission of peace and reconciliation" in the
country and bring it back from the brink of war.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya
of Kinshasa told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need that churches
in the DRC are being desecrated and Christian nuns terrorised
by "violent thugs" amid a wave of increased hostility on Christians.
Last week, the extremists burned the Malole major
seminary and "sown terror among the Carmelite Sisters" in nearby
Kananga, Pasinya said.
The extremists also attacked the St. Dominic church in the town of Limete. They "overturned the tabernacle, ransacked the
altar, smashed some of the benches and attempted to set fire to the
church," the archbishop said.
Late last year, at least 38 people were killed when the Islamist militant group
Allied Democratic Force (ADF) attacked the DRC town of Beni, according to Open
Doors USA.
The ADF has reportedly killed more than 700 people in various attacks since
2014. Christians believe the Islamist extremists want to uproot and drive them
out of the Congo so that the extremists can take control of the East Africa
Lakes area.
In August last year, Pope Francis denounced the Christian persecution in the
Congo after at least 36 Christians were hacked to death by the jihadist group
in the North Kivu region.
"My thoughts go to the people of North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, who have been recently hit with fresh massacres, which have for some
time been perpetrated in shameful silence, without attracting even as much as
our attention," Francis was quoted by the Radio Vaticana
as saying.
"Unfortunately, they are part of the too many innocent people who have no
weight on world opinion," the pope lamented.
Christians killed, as thousands flee continuing Islamist violence
May 6, 2016
World Watch Monitor
Islamist militants are suspected to have killed between 20 and 40 villagers in
the eastern extremes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to news
reports and a World Watch Monitor source.
Attackers carried machetes and axes into a village in North Kivu province, in
eastern DRC, late in the evening on 3 May.
“Between 20:00 and 22:00, the enemy managed to get past army positions and kill
peaceful residents in their homes, slashing their throats,” local administrator
Bernard Amisi Kalonda told Agence France-Presse. “The 16 bodies are in front of me,
killed by machete or axe.”
One local source later told World Watch Monitor on 6 May that as many as 34 may
have died; another source quoted 38, including, he said, two elders and their
wives of the CECA 20 (Communaute Evangelique au
Centre de l’Afrique) Church.
A local Christian missionary told World Watch Monitor on 4 May that thousands
of people have fled the area.
“It was eerie; hundreds of houses abandoned and thousands of people displaced,” the missionary said. “I saw four coffins and a
funeral or two on the road. I saw people carrying their mattresses and things
in cars, on motorcycles, on foot.
“Hundreds of homes along the road are abandoned. Where there was thriving
community, there is now a ghost town.”
World Watch Monitor is withholding the missionary’s
name for security reasons.
Gen. Jean Baillaud, the military chief of the UN’s
20,000-soldier force in the DR Congo, confirmed at least 17 people had been
killed.
Local administrator Kalonda told AFP it is unknown if
the attack was carried out by Muslim Defense International, formerly known as
the Alliance of Democratic Forces. The 20-year-old alliance of Ugandan
militants was first linked with former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. It has long
been active in the eastern regions of neighbouring DR
Congo, and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians since 2014,
according to the UN.
The MDI has repeatedly attacked the majority-Christian population in eastern
DRC for years. Kidnapping and murder are common. It is alleged to have support
from the Islamic government of Sudan, an assertion made by the Uganda
government and backed by Western diplomatic sources. The group is accused of
waging a proxy war for Sudan against Uganda as retribution for Uganda’s support of secessionists who broke away to form
the nation of South Sudan in 2011.
The MDI is known to have attracted foreign recruits and to have forced
Christians to convert to Islam.
The local population in the related area is overwhelmingly Christian (95.8%)
and the impact on them has been immense. After this latest attack, World Watch
Monitor heard from a pastor in the area who said the people are terrified but
that while some contemplated fleeing again, others have opted to stay in the
hope that things will normalise soon.
In a letter released a year ago, the Bishops of the Province of Bukavu (eastern DRC) denounced a “climate of genocide” and
the passivity of the Congolese State and international community.
“Does the situation have to deteriorate even more before the international
community takes measures against jihadism?” asked the Bishops in May 2015,
according to whom “a strategy of forced displacement of populations is taking
place in order to gradually occupy the land and install outbreaks of religious
fundamentalism and terrorist training bases”, the Catholic news agency Fides
reported.