DRC sees second 'savage' massacre of civilians in a week

At least 21 civilians in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have been massacred by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a militia blamed for hundreds of killings in the past year, UN sources and local officials said.

A source with the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, giving a provisional toll, said on Tuesday that 21 people were "savagely" killed in the Rwenzori area, while Donat Kibwana, administrator of the territory of Beni, said "22 persons ... 10 of them women" have been killed.

Another mass killing

The slaughter is the region's second mass killing in a week. 

Twenty-five civilians were killed on New Year's Eve at the village of Tingwe, Kibwana said on January 1.

More than 1,000 civilians were killed in attacks attributed to the ADF in 2019 and 2020, according to UN figures, despite repeated offensives by the army and UN peacekeepers against the group over the past decade.

DRC's eastern borderlands with Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi have been ravaged in attacks by militias, many formed of remnants of groups that fought in Congo's civil wars around the turn of the century.

Daesh has claimed responsibility for many suspected ADF attacks in the past, although UN experts said last week that they have been unable to confirm any direct link between the two groups.