Daesh takes responsibility for the massacre of some twenty Christian militiamen in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The jihadist group Daesh took responsibility on Sunday for the murder of some twenty "Christian militiamen" in an attack carried out this weekend in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the extremist organisation.
"Some 21 Christian militiamen were killed yesterday and their houses burned down in an attack by the fighters of the Islamic State," "military sources" told the Jihadist-affiliated Amaq agency in a statement.
According to the agency, the jihadists "clashed with Christian militiamen and managed to kill 21 of them, and burned their houses and church, before they withdrew from the town" of Lisasa, in the Congolese province of North Kivu, without giving more details.
The Kivu Security Barometer, a joint project of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Congolese Study Group, confirmed that an attack was carried out by Ugandan rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) - a group with links to Daesh - this weekend that left at least 21 dead and 20 missing.
Very close to the area hit this time, another bloody incursion by Ugandan rebels had left another 24 dead in the town of Baeti in the night between last Wednesday and Thursday, an action also claimed by Daesh.
The ADF began its violent campaign in 1996 in western Uganda as a political response to the regime of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whom they accused of going against the Muslims, but the army forced him to withdraw to the border with the DRC. From there they made incursions into Congolese territory, which have increased in frequency and brutality in recent times.
Their programme is diffuse, beyond a possible connection with the Jihadist organisation Daesh and a "modus operandi" consisting of attacking and hiding thanks to a mountainous geography, which allows them to escape the operations of the Congolese army and the United Nations mission on the ground, MONUSCO.
The northeast of the DRC has been plunged into a conflict fuelled by rebel militias and attacks by regular army soldiers for years, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping force, which has more than 15,000 troops deployed in the country.