At least 12 people have been killed in recent attacks by jihadists in Ituri province, in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nine bodies were found on Friday in Elake and three more in Apesiko, two villages in the Mambasa region, local officials told AFP on Saturday, attributing responsibility for the massacres of civilians to members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a jihadist organization that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.

According to witnesses, the three bodies found in the village of Apesiko were decapitated, while the perpetrators “set fire to houses and looted property”. The distance between the villages of Elake and Apesiko is approximately nine kilometers.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) are one of the armed groups ravaging the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and have been blamed for a barrage of deadly attacks that have mostly killed civilians. They were formed by mostly Muslim Ugandan rebels who settled in DR Congo in the 1990s. In 2019, ADF pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for many actions of the group it presents as an offshoot “Islamic State in the Central Africa Province” (Islamic State in the Central Africa Province – ISCAP).