By Frank Kamuntu
At least 70 bodies have been found beheaded in a church with most having been held hostage.
The horrific discovery was made in an abandoned village in the DR Congo on February 14. The victims, understood to be hostages of the ADF rebels, were found in a Protestant church in Kasanga, where residents had fled due to repeated attacks.
The ADF – Allied Defence Forces – are affiliated to ISIS and they are seen as the most deadly armed group in the region. The M23 – March 23 Movement – has previously been considered the greater threat and so has faced most international attention. Several Western countries including the United States and France have linked M23 with Rwanda but its government has denied the link.
The dead in the church massacre are understood to be among the dozens of people who have been reported missing since last Wednesday in the village. Horrific details from local media have revealed that they were decapitated using machetes.
It comes as Rwanda-backed rebels in eastern Congo entered the region’s second- largest city of Bukavu on Friday, local and civil society leaders said, the latest ground gained since a major escalation of their years-long fighting with government forces.
The M23 rebels entered the city’s Kazingu and Bagira zone and were advancing towards the centre of the city of about 1.3 million people, according to Jean Samy, vice- president of the civil society in South Kivu. He reported gunfire in parts of the city. Videos posted online appeared to show rebels marching toward the Bagira area. In one of the videos, a voice in the background shouted: “They are there… there are many of them.”
Hours earlier, the rebels claimed to have seized a second airport in the region, in the town of Kavumu, following a days-long advance, while the UN warned that the recent escalation of fighting with government forces has left 350,000 internally displaced people without shelter.
The M23, which is allegedly supported by about 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, took control of eastern Congo’s biggest city, Goma, in late January. The M23 and ADF are the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control of Congo’s mineral-rich east.
The rebellion has killed at least 2,000 people in and around Goma and left hundreds of thousands of displaced people stranded, the UN and Congolese authorities have said. It is not clear who is now in control of the Kavumu national airport, located about 30 kilometres from Bukavu, which is the capital of South Kivu province.
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