BUNIA: At least 23 people were killed and about 20 taken hostage this week in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by a group linked to Daesh, local sources said.
The attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, were carried out on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Ituri province along the border with Uganda.
“A total of 23 people executed by these rebels” in the villages of Matolo and Samboko, Jospin Paluku, coordinator of one of the leading civil society organizations in Mambasa territory, said, specifying that the toll is provisional.
At least another 20 civilians were “taken hostage, including the son of the village chief of Matolo,” he added.
Humanitarian groups confirmed the numbers and said they were likely to rise.
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The attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces were carried out in the Ituri province along the border with Uganda.
The victims were mostly farmers working in the fields, police said.
ADF, which is made of former Ugandan rebels, has been implanted since the mid-1990s in the northeast of the DRC, where it has killed thousands of civilians despite the deployment of the Ugandan army alongside the Congolese armed forces.
At the end of 2021, Kampala and Kinshasa launched a joint military operation against the ADF, called “Shujaa,” without so far managing to end their operations.
Paluku said it was the first ADF attack since the start of the year, after a three-month lull.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said that poisoning was suspected in an unexplained illness outbreak in the western DR Congo.
The health scare is the latest to befall the country that has seen outbreaks including mpox, as well as deadly violence in its conflict-wracked east.
In the western province of Equateur, there have been nearly 1,100 illnesses and 60 deaths since the start of the year, with symptoms including fever, headaches, joint pain, and body aches, according to the WHO.
The UN agency’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said an investigation was underway, but tests had been negative for hemorrhagic fevers such as Marburg and Ebola.
It “appears very much more like a toxic type event, either from a biologic perspective like meningitis or from chemical exposure,” Ryan said.
He said that local authorities had indicated that “there is a very strong level of suspicion of a poisoning event” related to a water source in a village.
“Clearly, at the center of this, it would appear that we have some kind of poisoning event,” he added.
