BENI, DR Congo, Jan 25, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - An attack blamed on militants
linked to the Islamic State group in conflict-torn eastern Democratic
Republic of Congo has killed five civilians, local sources said on Wednesday.

The rebel attack took place at around 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) on Tuesday in Ngite,
in the territory of Beni in North Kivu province, local civil society official
Jadot Mwendapole told AFP.

"They killed five civilians, all men," he said. Some were killed by firearms,
others with knives.

One person was missing and property was looted, he added.

"The enemy, ADF, killed five civilians," Augustin Kapupa, head of the Mbau
administrative area where Ngite is located, said.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), historically a Ugandan Muslim majority
rebel coalition, established itself in eastern DRC in 1995.

The group is one of the deadliest militias in the strife-torn area. It
pledged allegiance to the Islamic State organisation in 2019.

The Washington-based SITE group, which specialises in monitoring radical
Islamist groups, said the Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) had
claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming to have killed six
"Christians".

In another statement posed on the SITE website, ISCAP said it had carried out
another attack on Monday in the same village, killing seven people, an attack
of which none of the local sources interviewed by AFP had any knowledge.

Since April 2019, the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a
number of ADF attacks and describes the ADF as its regional affiliate.

In November 2021, after several attacks on Ugandan soil blamed on the ADF,
the Ugandan army joined forces with the DRC to try to drive the ADF out of
their eastern DR Congo strongholds. Despite this, the group remains active.

In December, the group was accused of two attacks in western Uganda in which
13 villagers were killed.