Six civilians were hacked to death in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo in an attack by Ugandan Islamist rebels, local officials said Tuesday. Fighters from the Ugandan Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked a small village in North Kivu province on Monday, an administrator in the Beni region, Amisi Kalonda, told AFP.
"The provisional toll is six dead, all civilians (killed) with machetes, two injured and a medical centre plundered," Kalonda said of the raid in the village of Kitevya. Noella Katsongerwaki, Beni's civil society president, speaking by telephone from Goma, the capital of North Kivu, said two men and four women were killed. Captain Mak Hazukay, the local region's army spokesman, confirmed there had been an attack but did not comment on the casualties. Around 700 people have been killed, mostly hacked to death, in attacks in the troubled region since October 2014.
The Congolese government and the MONUSCO United Nations mission in the country both blame the attacks on the ADF, a group of rebels dominated by puritanical Ugandan Islamists. Formed by the elusive militant Jamil Mukulu in 1989 and initially focused on overthrowing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the ADF absorbed other rebel groups into its ranks and started carrying out attacks in 1995.