ISIS claim responsibility for shooting and hacking 13 people to death in Congo region
ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack in an area of eastern Congo stricken by the second-worst Ebola outbreak on record.
The Allied Democratic Forces, a group with links to ISIS, said that it had killed or wounded 25 people in an attack on government troops in the town of Beni.
But Modeste Bakwanamaha, the mayor of Beni, said the group had in fact butchered 13 civilians with guns and knives in an assault late on Monday.
ISIS made the announcement via its channels on anonymous messaging app Telegram.
Beni is in the middle of a cluster of towns in eastern Congo which is in the grips of a worsening Ebola epidemic.
In the last ten months more than 2,000 cases have been registered, with two thirds of those proving to be fatal.
ISIS began claiming attacks in the Congo in April this year, and Monday’s raid marked at least the third assault claimed by them.
On April 18, the group claimed its first attack, saying the Allied Democratic Forces had killed three people in fighting near Bovata, a short distance from Beni.
Announcing its presence in the Congo via its semi-official Amaq news agency, the group described the country as the ‘Central Africa Province of the Caliphate.’
Fighting continued last month, when on May 30 ISIS claimed Allied Democratic Forces attacked three military bases near Mavivi – leaving ‘dozens’ hurt or killed.
Meanwhile Congolese defence forces claimed to have killed 26 ADF fighters in a gun battle near the town of Ngite.
The ADF originated in nearby Uganda and has been active in Congo for some time, killing hundreds of people over the last three years.
The ADF has never officially claimed allegiance to ISIS but last year an ISIS propaganda book was found on the body of a dead ADF fighter and members of the group have been posting jihadi propaganda online.
A report by New York University’s Congo Research Group and the Bridgeway Foundation in November said the ADF had received money from a financier linked to ISIS, as the group looked to spread beyond Syria as its so-called Caliphate collapsed.
Rival armed groups control parts of eastern Congo, long after the official end of a 1998-2003 war in which millions of people died.
Source: Daily Mail
