At least seven people have lost their lives this Sunday in an assault carried out by militiamen of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group linked to the Islamic State, in the town of Beni, located in the North Kivu province, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the Congolese portal Actualité, all the victims belonged to the pygmy community of the Twa ethnic group and were murdered in the Ngadi neighborhood, in the Ruwenzori district, which is part of the provisional capital of the region.
According to the testimonies of the survivors, the attackers burst in at night and blocked any attempt by civilians to flee before executing them. "I almost died in that attack. They arrived without us realizing it. They woke us up and the shooting started," recounted an eyewitness, Mambiya Mubere.
"In the midst of the chaos, I managed to escape the camp. I was with Shukrani Mangese, who returned because he was worried about his parents, and that's when they killed him along with them. We are pygmies. We don't know anything about politics, but they are killing us," he lamented.
The bodies remained lying in the place for hours until a group of inhabitants managed to collect them and transport them towards the urban center using improvised stretchers.
The transfer of the bodies led to a spontaneous mobilization of protest and mourning, which led the Police to deploy a contingent to contain the march and erect a barricade to stop their advance. The agents opened fire to disperse the protesters and, in the midst of the confusion, managed to recover some of the victims' bodies.
The ADF was formed in the nineties in Uganda and has consolidated itself as one of the most active armed groups in eastern DRC, where the deaths of thousands of civilians are attributed to them. In 2019, the organization suffered a split after its leader swore allegiance to the Islamic State in Central Africa (ISCA), the regional branch of the jihadist group, under whose banner it has operated ever since.
On the other hand, this Saturday four people were kidnapped by unidentified armed men on the road connecting Kiwanja and Kanyabayonga, in the heart of Virunga National Park, near Busendo, in the Rutshuru territory, also in North Kivu.
Among those kidnapped is Father Gédéon Kasereka Bahati, a Catholic priest from the parish of Saint Joseph in Bobandana, diocese of Goma, captured when he was returning from Kanyabayonga after officiating a wedding. He was traveling with his driver and a newlywed couple, who were also taken hostage, according to Actualité.
So far, the Diocese of Goma has not issued an official statement on what happened, but a source close to the families of those affected indicates that the captors have demanded the payment of a ransom.