At least 10 civilians were killed yesterday Saturday in attacks attributed to members of the ADF group, which has now pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), in eastern DR Congoaccording to sources in the area.

The attacks took place in the Beni region of North Kivu province, which has been destabilized for several years.

“The ADF launched two simultaneous attacks this morning in Mukoni, a village two kilometers from the center of Mamowe,” Kinos Katuo, head of civil society in the second community, told AFP.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)—a group originally formed by Muslim rebels from Uganda—have been waging a three-decade war in eastern DR Congo and are blamed for thousands of civilian deaths.

Leon Siviue, a self-governing official in Beni-Bau, where the attacks took place, stressed that the reckoning “is only temporary”.

He added that he was informed that more than 10 people, women and men, were murdered.

A survivor who spoke to AFP said gunmen set houses on fire.

The same group was also blamed for an attack in late July that killed at least 20 people.

Since late 2021, the DR Congo and Ugandan armed forces have been conducting joint operations against the ADF in North Kivu and neighboring Ituri Province. But the operation did not lead to an end to deadly attacks on civilians.

The ADF pledged allegiance in 2019 to the Islamic State jihadist group, which it describes as its arm in central Africa.

The group is accused of an endless series of massacres of civilians in DR Congo and attacks in neighboring Uganda.