An attack in eastern DR Congo has killed some 20 people, local sources told AFP Thursday, blaming militants affiliated with the Islamic State group.
The attack, attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militant group by area residents, took place in the Beni territory in the troubled North Kivu province.
“The victims were cultivating their fields,” Nicolas Kikuku, mayor of the commune of Oicha, the capital of the Beni territory, told AFP.
He added that 20 deaths had been recorded.
“The enemy always attacks the poor farmers,” the mayor said.
The farmers were killed by gunshot or knife in a village around 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Oicha, where most of the bodies were brought.
The mayor was not able to specify the exact date of their death.
“Nineteen bodies were brought to the morgue last night,” Darius Syaira, civil society representative for Beni told AFP.
“This is a provisional report, because we have been informed of other bodies” in the same area, he added.
“We are asking for military reinforcements” in this region west of Oicha “to go on the offensive against the ADF who are causing us grief at all times,” Syaira said.
The ADF, originally made up of mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, has established a presence over the past three decades in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, killing thousands of civilians.
Since the end of 2021, the Congolese and Ugandan armies have been conducting joint operations against the ADF in North Kivu and the neighboring province of Ituri but have so far failed to stop the deadly attacks on civilians.
The ADF pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State group, which portrays them as its central African branch.
The ADF has been accused of massacring Congolese civilians as well as staging attacks in neighboring Uganda.