OICHA(DR Congo), Jan 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Fifteen people have been killed in the eastern DR Congo region of Beni, where hundreds have died in militia violence since November, a local official said, giving a
provisional toll.
In the past 24 hours, “14 bodies have been found hacked to death,” while a
pastor was killed in a separate attack, the administrator for the Beni
region, Donat Kibwana, said.
Two people with severe head wounds have been admitted to the hospital in
Oicha for surgery.
According to a toll compiled by civil society groups, 265 people have been
killed in the Beni region since the army began a crackdown on an armed group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), on Oct 30.
The massacres seem to be a tactic by the ADF to frighten the population
into silence, say local commentators.
The ADF began as an Islamist 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. — NNN-AGENCIES