Attacks by rebels affiliated with the Islamic State group have killed more than 50 people in warn-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo this week, as scores continue to be displaced, sources told AFP.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed 13 people in their latest attack on Thursday in three villages in Beni territory in North Kivu province, a civil society leader told AFP on Friday.
“A total of 13 people (were killed), seven men and six women, and several others are missing,” said Kinos Katuo, civil society president in the Mamove locality where the attacks took place.
In incursions on Tuesday, ADF forces killed 39 people in three other villages in North Kivu, Leon Siviwe, an administrative leader in part of Beni told AFP on Friday.
Sources told AFP on Wednesday that 15 people had been killed in an attack a day earlier in one of the three villages, Masau.
“The toll could rise as the search continues, the population is fleeing and heading towards supposedly secure areas,” Siviwe said of the three villages.
Siviwe said a number of motorcycles and homes had also been damaged in the attack.
Residents of another village are also fleeing, with ADF rebels some seven kilometres from the village, John Bwanakawa, Cantine civil society president, told AFP.
Around 85 percent of the village population had fled to nearby towns including Beni, he said.
The ADF, originally mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, has established a presence over the past three decades in eastern DR Congo, killing thousands of civilians.
It pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State group, which portrays the ADF as its central African branch.
Since the end of 2021, the Congolese and Ugandan armies have conducted joint operations against the ADF in North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri but have so far failed to stop the deadly attacks on civilians.
The east of the country has been plagued by violence by armed groups for decades.
The Rwanda-back M23 (March 23 Movement) resumed its armed campaign in the region at the end of 2021, seizing swathes of territory in North Kivu, as intensified fighting continues to displace tens of thousands of people.