ICC Note: More than 36 people have been killed after a recent attack by an apparent emerging radical Muslim threat on Christians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Militants from the Allied Democratic Forces-National Association for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU) tied up dozens of Christian villagers in Rwangoma near Beni in the embattled North Kivu region, then hacking them to death. Local reports suggest the militants may have killed as many as 50 people. In recent years, ADF-NALU has targeted Christians with violence, abducting people, looting Christian villages, and destroying churches, according to reports.
08/16/2016, Rwangoma, Democratic Republic of Congo (World Watch Monitor) – A relatively unknown militant group has intensified attacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), raising fears of the emergence of a new jihadist organisation in central Africa. For years now, one of various rebel groups operating there, the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces-National Association for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU), has been trying to uproot Christians from the north-east area of DRC through attacks, rape, looting, kidnap and murder – on an almost weekly basis.
At least 36 people were killed in the latest attack on Saturday night (13 Aug.) in the village of Rwangoma, near Beni, the major town in the region. This was the deadliest attack in the area since November 2014; victims were tied up and hacked to death. The executive director at the Centre of Study for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights (that documents violence in North Kivu), Omar Kavota, told Reuters he had received reports of as many as 50 dead.
ADF-NALU, originally rooted in a rebel movement to overthrow Uganda’s government and replace it with an Islamist fundamentalist state, but forced to re-locate over the border into DRC, has been murdering local people, far from the attention of most of the world’s major media. While the National Association militants ostensibly ‘ended’ their fight in 2007, local bishops and civil society have repeatedly denounced the resurgence of violence still carried out in the name of ADF-NALU
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