ADF fighters kill at least 36 people in northeastern DR Congo

Islamic State-linked rebels have killed at least 36 people in two days of attacks in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local and security sources said Thursday.

Fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) reportedly killed at least 15 people in the town of Biakato, in Ituri, including at least one child and three women.

The head of the local civil society organisation said ADF fighters had started killing them “with bullets and machetes," adding that they had already recovered 15 bodies.

Some 21 others, most of them reportedly farmers, died in attacks on four isolated villages on the border between Ituri and North Kivu provinces.

The incidents occurred in areas covered by dense forest, where the ADF has been accused of numerous abuses in recent years.

The armed group was formed by Uganda rebels originally intending to overthrow the Kampala government and establish an Islamic state.

But it has been based in neighbouring Congo since the late 1990s with analysts saying the group is increasingly expanding its operations in the region.

In a report published on Tuesday, Amnesty International accused the ADF of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The United Nations has also implicated it in various crimes, including extrajudicial killings, extortion, and kidnappings for ransom.

The mineral-rich eastern DRC has been plagued for three decades by conflict involving various armed groups, militia and army troops.

Since 2021, the Ugandan army has been deployed in the northern part of North Kivu and in Ituri to fight the ADF, alongside the Congolese military.