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At least 11 civilians have been killed in conflict-torn eastern DR Congo, the army said on Monday, in an attack blamed on militants linked to the Islamic State group.
Captain Antony Mualushayi, an army spokesman, stated that “jihadists” attacked the village of Kitsanga in the Watalinga area of North Kivu province on Sunday night.
Eleven civilians were killed, he said, before soldiers intervened and “neutralised” six militants. The death toll is provisional.
AFP was unable to independently confirm the details of the attack.
Odette Zawadi, a civil society leader in Watalinga, said that 22 people had been killed.
“At the moment, the village is empty, most of the inhabitants found refuge on the Ugandan side,” she said.
The attack occurred near the border with neighbouring Uganda — in an area where the IS-linked Allied Democratic Forces group has been active for years.
Militias have plagued eastern DRC for decades, a legacy of regional wars that flared in the 1990s and 2000s.
Originally composed of mainly Muslim Ugandan rebels, the ADF gained a foothold in the volatile region in the 1990s.
Since 2019, some ADF attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State group, which calls the fighters the Islamic State Central Africa Province.
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