Sixteen bodies of hostages held by a rebel group were discovered this morning in the town of Katerin, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the civil society leader told the Spanish agency EFE.
Katerin is about two kilometers from the town of Beu-Manyama, in the Beni territory of North Kivu province, where at least 21 people were killed in an attack by the Ugandan rebel group Forces Allies Democratic (FAD) on Saturday.
According to Delphin Mupenda, coordinator of a civil society organization in Beni, the bodies correspond to FAD hostages who were executed.
“These people had been kidnapped by the FAD. We don’t know why they hacked them to death like that and then shot them. We have already contacted the local authorities as well as the FARDC. [Forças Armadas da RDC]”, Mupenda told EFE by phone.
FARDC spokesman Capt. Antony Mualishay confirmed the attacks, saying the army had killed seven rebels and wounded several others as they chased the attackers.
“We managed to recover [controlar] the situation and weaken the action of these enemies of the country. We killed seven members of the FAD and continue to persecute them to free other hostages,” the captain told Efe.
The FAD is a rebel group of Ugandan origin, but is currently based in the northeast of the DRC, near the border with Uganda.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the FAD was responsible for some 1,260 deaths in 2021, making it the deadliest armed group in the DRC.
In addition, the Ugandan authorities accused the FAD of organizing three suicide attacks on their territory in November 2021.
The militia’s goals are unclear beyond a possible link to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization, which sometimes claims responsibility for its attacks.
Although UN Security Council experts found no evidence of direct IS support for the FAD, the US has identified the rebels as a “terrorist organization” affiliated with the jihadist group since March 2021.
The Congolese government imposed a state of siege on North Kivu and neighboring Ituri province in May 2021 to contain rebel groups, although this did not eliminate the problem.
To neutralize the FAD, the armies of the DRC and Uganda began a joint military operation on Congolese soil at the end of November 2021.
Since 1998, eastern DRC has been mired in conflict fueled by rebel militias and attacks by army soldiers, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission, with more than 14,000 troops deployed.
Source: Observadora
