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DRCONGO-UNREST
Attack in east DR Congo leaves two dead, 24 missing
BENI, DR Congo, Aug 6, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Two people were killed and 24
remain missing after a militia attack overnight on a town in the volatile
east of the DR Congo, local sources said Tuesday.
The assailants killed two transport workers, torched a goods truck and
looted at least seven kiosks in the town of Kisima, Noella Katongerwaki,
president of a regional civil society group, told AFP.
Katongerwaki, based in the flashpoint town of Beni in the North Kivu
region, said the attackers came from the direction of the Virunga National
Park, famous for its mountain gorillas.
“After the attack the assailants went back that way,” she added by
telephone from the scene of the violence.
Kisima is around 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Beni, a major market
town just five kilometres from the Virunga park and near the border with
Uganda. Ten other people were killed at the weekend in the same region, which
is a stronghold of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a notorious rebel
militia among several operating in the region battling for control of its
rich mineral resources.
It has been accused of killing several hundred civilians over the past
three-and-a-half years.
The militia group, created by Muslim radicals to oppose of Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni, has been present in North Kivu since 1995.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1811 hrs