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DRCONGO-CONFLICT
Militia massacre kills eight in east DR Congo: police
BENI, DR Congo, Feb 8, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – At least eight civilians were killed in eastern DR Congo and another 20 reported missing on Friday, police said, in the latest massacre blamed on a militia in the troubled region.
DR Congo’s east has been hit by months of attacks and massacres blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which is the target of a military offensive.
ADF fighters “slit the throats of eight people today in broad daylight. Thankfully, our intervention prevented a worse toll,” Major Losendjola Morisho, police chief in Mangina area, told AFP.
“About another 20 others are also missing in the area. We don’t know if they have been killed, taken hostage or fled the area. We are searching for them.”
Mangina is in the Beni region, the epicentre of the ADF campaign where activists say more than 300 people have been killed since October when the army began its offensive.
On January 28, 36 civilians were killed in an attack in Oicha, also in Beni, in what activists say was part of ADF’s revenge attacks on civilians for the army campaign.
The ADF, blamed for the deaths of more than a thousand civilians in Beni since October 2014, began as an Islamist-rooted rebel group in Uganda that opposed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
It fell back into eastern DRC in 1995 during the Congo Wars and appears to have halted raids inside Uganda. Its recruits today are people of various nationalities.
BSS/AFP/MMA/0830HRS