Volkswacht Bodensee - Rebels kill seven, target health clinics in eastern DR Congo

"They even killed sick people," Norbert Muhindo, a nurse at the referral clinic in the town of Maboya, in the Beni territory of North Kivu province, told AFP.

The rebels belonged to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a movement presented by the jihadist organisation Islamic State as its affiliate in Central Africa, Muhindo said.

The raiders arrived in Maboya "around midnight", he declared, adding: "There were many of them. They said 'We want war'."

The attackers first set fire to the health centre, where they killed three people, before heading into the centre of the town, where three more killings were reported.

Muhindo said they moved on to "the Tinge hospital owned by the Protestant community", about 1.5 kilometres (almost a mile) from the Maboya health centre.

At Tinge, "they killed a sentry and took a nurse with them," he said.

Roger Wangeve, president of the civil society of the Bashu chiefdom (an administrative body), confirmed the incursion, blaming "ADF rebels" who "burned the Tinge hospital and the Maboya referral health centre".

According to Wangeve, the rebel force later "burned and looted villages".

The provisional toll of seven dead was confirmed by a police source who asked not to be named.

After a few weeks of calm, attacks have apparently resumed in the Beni territory, where the Congolese and Ugandan armies have been engaged in joint operations against the ADF for almost a year.

The ADF, which originated in western Uganda, is accused of massacres of civilians in the east of the DRC and jihadist attacks at the end of 2021 in Uganda.

Eastern DRC has been destabilised for nearly three decades by the presence of more than a hundred local and foreign armed groups, including the ADF.

The DRC's provinces of North Kivu and Ituri have been under a state of siege since May 2021, but the exceptional measure has so far failed to stop the violence.

The joint DRC-Ugandan operation said that the ADF was being "pursued in depth, is... rootless and very often attacks urban centres."

It called on the public to be vigilant and tip off the authorities about any suspicious movement.

The statement added that six ADF rebels had been killed in Beni's Rwenzori sector had been killed and nine others, including a woman, "neutralised" farther north in Ituri.

Items that were captured during these operations, whose dates were not given, included an AK-47 assault rifle, eight ammunition clips and four "rockets", as well as two mobile phones and five solar panels.

F.Pavlenko--BTB