The militia linked to ISIS kills 60 in the machete attack against the funeral in the east of the Congo, the local authorities say

Johannesburg – At least 60 people were killed in an attack by members who pushed for a machete of a rebel group affiliated with ISIS in East Congo on Monday night, local officials said on Tuesday. The attack was the last one by the allied democratic forces in a region where a variety of armed groups have taken advantage of an impoverished population while competing for the control of huge rare mineral reserves.

The attack occurred at night when a group of people attended a funeral in the city of Nyoto, said Reuters, a local administrator in the Lubero territory of the province of North Kivu.

“The victims were taken by surprise in a mourning ceremony in the town of Ntoyo around 9 pm, and most of them were killed with machetes,” he said, adding that a search for attackers was ongoing.

“The ADF attack caused around 60 deaths, but the final toll will be given later tonight because the territory has just deployed services in the area to count the number of decapitated people,” said News, Colonel Kiwewa, another local administrator in the territory of Lubero.

“There were about 10 of them. I saw machetes. They told the people to meet in one place and started cutting them. I heard people shouting and fainted,” a survivor told an AP journalist in a burial service on Tuesday.

Samuel Kagheni, a local civil society leader, told Reuters that the assailants used machetes and also shot some victims before setting fire to vehicles.

The ADF began in neighboring Uganda in the mid -1990s as an Islamist militia, before moving to the border region with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The militia established ties with ISIS in 2018 and was appointed by the United States Department of State as a foreign terrorist organization in 2021.

The United States government cited brutal violence committed against civilians and regional military forces by making their designation. Experts believe that the ADF probably has between 1,000 and 2,000 members, including some foreign combatants.

Monday’s attack was the last one in a series of recent murders in the region. According to regional officials.

Bintou Keita, head of the United Nations Mission in the Congo known as Monusco, said in a statement last month that “the attacks aimed at civilians … are intolerable and constitute serious violations of international law and human rights.”

In response to the attacks last month, Monusco said he had reinforced his military positions in the region.

There are more than 120 armed militias that operate in the east of the Congo, and the ADF is one of the greatest and brutal.

President Donald Trump has gotten into the ongoing regional crisis, trying to Broker a peace agreement Between the Congo and neighboring Rwanda, which is believed to support the M23 Rebel Group That launched a great offensive east of the Congo earlier this year, taking two large cities and mineral mines. The agreement has not been completed.

• Congo Democratic Republic
• War
• ISIS
• Africa