Kinshasa, Dec. 22 (EFE) – While voting was taking place for the presidential elections, two attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group with diffuse ties to the Islamic State, killed at least 16 civilians between Thursday and Friday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a civil society activist confirmed to EFE.<\/p>
One of the attacks occurred on Friday in the village of Kokola, in the northeastern province of North Kivu, which borders Uganda.<\/p>
“The incident happened this morning around 4 a.m. when Ugandan ADF rebels attacked Kokola,” the spokesman for the civil society of the city of B\u00e9ni, Delphin Mupanda, told EFE by telephone.<\/p>
“They killed six people, including five women and one man, before taking property from residents and kidnapping others,” Mupanda said, adding that four more bodies were found on the outskirts of the village.<\/p>
“These are the bodies of young men who were hacked to death with machetes. They had probably tried to resist the attackers and were subsequently killed,” the spokesman said adding that four people were also wounded and are in the hospital.<\/p>
In addition, the ADF killed six civilians Thursday in the nearby town of Erengeti, near a polling station where the second day of the country’s parliamentary elections was being held. <\/p>
“There was widespread panic when everyone heard about the ADF incursion,” Mupanda explained.<\/p>
“It was only later that the Independent National Electoral Commission people and the voters returned to the polling station. The army then intervened and everything ended well,” he added.<\/p>
The ADF is a rebel group of Ugandan origin, but currently based in the Congolese provinces of North Kivu and Ituri.<\/p>
Its aims are diffuse beyond a possible link to IS, which sometimes claims responsibility for its attacks.<\/p>
The United States has listed the ADF as a “terrorist organization” linked to the extremist group since March 2021, although UN Security Council experts have not found evidence of direct IS support for the ADF.<\/p>
While the group maintains their bases in eastern Congo, authorities in neighboring Uganda also accuse it of organizing attacks in their territory.<\/p>
In an effort to put an end to the ADF, the DRC and Ugandan armies began a joint military operation on Congolese soil in November 2021, which is still ongoing, but rebel attacks have not stopped.<\/p>
Since 1998, the eastern DR Congo has been in a conflict fueled by rebel militias and the army, despite the presence of the UN mission in the country, Monusco. EFE <\/p>
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