At least 11 people were killed and 39 others injured in a bomb attack on a church in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday. attributed by the authorities to a group close to the Islamic State (IS). The “terrorist act” took place in a Pentecostal church in Kasindi (North Kivu), a city near the border with Uganda, reported the spokesman for the Congolese army, Antony Mualushayi.
“It’s hard to put all the elements together right now. However, we have already managed to apprehend one suspect, a Kenyan subject whose age is estimated to be in his thirties,” Mwalushay said. According to the Congolese government, the attack was carried out by “ADF terrorists”, in reference to the Allied Democratic Forces, presented by the jihadist group EIS as its affiliate in central Africa. The objective of this “bomb attack” were “citizens in full mass in the parish of the 8th community of the Pentacostal Churches of the Congo in the city of Kasindi“Tweeted the Ministry of Communication.
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“It is still a provisional balance because the victims are in various health centers to which they have been transferred, but eleven corpses have already been found. This number will increase while we finish the round of all health centers,” Delphin Mupanda, spokesman for Beni’s civil society, told Efe by phone.
Originally a Ugandan rebel movement, the ADF is considered the deadliest group of the 120 armed movements in eastern DRC. They are accused of having massacred thousands of civilians in this country and of having committed attacks in Uganda. The United States included them in 2021 on its list of terrorist organizations.
Since 2021, Uganda and the DRC have launched a joint military operation against the ADF in North Kivu and neighboring Ituri province. The other active groups also seek to control areas on ethnic grounds and extract the rich resources of the territory, often with funding from neighboring countries.
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