Seven civilians and a soldier have been killed in two assaults by the notorious ADF militia in the Beni region of eastern DR Congo, local sources said on Thursday.
“The ADF attacked the village of Kainama, in the Beni-Mbau area, overnight Tuesday. The toll is six civilians dead, two women and four men,” local official Muhindo Isaya told AFP.
The village has been secured by the army, although several homes were torched by the assailants and the population fled into the forest, Isaya said.
On Wednesday, a soldier and a motorcyclist who was transporting him were killed after they ran into an ADF ambush, said Wilson Paluku Batoleni, head of civil society organisations in the Ruwenzori area of Beni.
The ADF — Allied Democratic Forces — is a remnant of armed groups that proliferated in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after the vast region was convulsed by war in the 1990s.
It began as a Ugandan Muslim rebel group but has since widened recruitment to other nationalities and has not carried out any attacks on neighbouring Uganda for years.
The force has carried out hundreds of civilian killings since the army launched an offensive against it last October.
It has been blamed for more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the Beni region since 2014.
