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The
militants struck late on Monday, killing residents of Mwenda
village with machetes and guns, its civil society leader Jeremi
Mbweki said.
He blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan Islamist
group which has emerged as the most lethal militia in Congo's
eastern borderlands and is suspected of hacking to death at
least 17 people in a nearby village last week.
"Now we live in total fear, with no certainty about the future,"
Mbweki said by phone. The administrator of Beni territory, Donat
Kibwana, confirmed the death toll and said the ADF was
responsible.
More than 1,000 civilians were killed in attacks attributed to
the ADF in 2019 and 2020, according to U.N. figures, despite
repeated offensives by the army and U.N. peacekeepers against
the group over the past decade.
Nine more bodies were discovered on Monday in another village in
the area - also victims of an alleged ADF attack, Kibwana said.
Congo's eastern borderlands with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have
been ravaged by attacks by militias, many formed of remnants of
groups that fought in Congo's civil wars around the turn of the
century.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for many suspected ADF
attacks in the past, although U.N. experts said last week that
they have been unable to confirm any direct link between the two
groups.
(Reporting by Erikas Mwisi Kambale,; Writing by Alessandra
Prentice, editing by Ed Osmond)
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