At least 60 people killed in a rebel attack on funeral ceremony in eastern Congo

Audio By Carbonatix

GOMA, Congo (AP) — Rebels in eastern Congo affiliated with the Islamic State group killed at least 60 people in an attack overnight, an official said Tuesday.

The attack was carried by the Allied Democratic Force, or ADF, in Ntoyo, North Kivu, after residents gathered at a burial.

“There were about 10 of them. I saw machetes. They told people to gather in one place and started cutting them. I listened to people screaming and I fainted,” a survivor who was present at the burial told The Associated Press. She requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

The attack caused around 60 deaths, said Col. Alain Kiwewa, a local administrator of the Lubero territory, where Ntoyo is located. He added that the final toll is not yet known "because the territory has just deployed services to the area to count the number of beheaded people.

The region is beset by a set of complex conflicts, including an increase in attacks by the ADF, which operates in the border region between Congo and Uganda.

Later on Tuesday, a civil society leader reported a second attack by the ADF, in Beni territory in North Kivu, with at least 18 people killed.

“Many bodies continue to be received in Oicha. Bodies are deformed following machete blows,” Claude Musavuli, a civil society leader and human rights activist in Beni told AP. He said villagers have been called to identify the bodies.

“We don’t know where we are going where with this situation,” he said.

Despite joint operations by both Congo and Uganda to target the rebel group, the ADF, which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2019, has continued to attack civilians.

In July, it carried out two large-scale attacks in Ituri province — a church attack killing at least 34 in Komanda and an earlier attack that killed 66 people in Irumu.

The attacks worsen the plight of Congolese in the eastern region where several other conflicts are unfolding, including a major conflict between the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel groups and the central government. The government is battling multiple armed groups across different fronts, which has taken troops away from border villages, especially to combat the M23.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in Geneva on Tuesday that the ADF had “taken advantage of the security vacuum.”

-

Ope Adetayo contributed from Lagos, Nigeria.