AFP :
Nearly 200 people have been killed and 40,000 displaced since January following a surge of attacks by the ADF militia in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN said Friday.
The United Nations refugee agency reported an “alarming increase” in attacks by the notorious Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — a historically Ugandan Islamist group present in eastern DR Congo since 1995.
Since the start of the year, attacks blamed on the ADF “have killed nearly 200 people, injured dozens of others, and displaced an estimated 40,000 people in DRC’s Beni Territory in North Kivu province as well as nearby villages in Ituri province,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said.
“In less than three months, the ADF has allegedly raided 25 villages, set fire to dozens of houses and kidnapped over 70 people,” he told reporters in Geneva.
The ADF has the reputation of being the bloodiest of the 122 militias that plague the eastern DRC. It killed an estimated 465 people in 2020.
