At least 20 people were killed in an attack in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday afternoon. Second a local source, a group of rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces (FDA) – an Islamist group affiliated with the Islamic State present in Uganda and the DRC – ambushed farmers returning from the working day in Enebula, in the province of North Kivu. The attack was claimed on Telegram by the Islamic State, a militant jihadist group that controls several provinces in Central Africa.
The bombing is part of a wave of FDA attacks in the region that have escalated in recent years. Originally born in Uganda, the FDA began inroads into the DRC’s eastern provinces in the 1990s and have since been accused of killing thousands of civilians, becoming the deadliest of the rebel groups fighting in the region. Since 2019, some FDA attacks in eastern DRC have been claimed by the Islamic State, which describes the group as its local offshoot.
The United Nations mission to the country said on Thursday that more than 30 people had already been killed by the FDA in neighboring Ituri province earlier in the week.