The armed forces launched an offensive on Saturday against positions held by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in Tchabi, in Ituri province, the region’s military governor, Lieutenant-General Johnny Luboya, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“We lost seven troops and on the ADF side, 15 rebels were neutralised,” he said.<\/p>\n
The operation also led to the release of 150 hostages “who had been used as human shields,” he said, confirming an earlier military report issued on Sunday.<\/p>\n
At the end of May, authorities accused the rebels of killing at least 50 civilians in Boga and Tchabi in Irumu territory, where they also attacked a refugee camp.<\/p>\n
A historically Ugandan Islamist group, the ADF is the deadliest of scores of armed militias that roam the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).<\/p>\n
The DRC’s Catholic Church says the ADF has killed around 6,000 civilians since 2013, while a respected US-based monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), blames it for more than 1,200 deaths in the Beni area alone since 2017.<\/p>\n
The toll has risen sharply since 2019, when the militia appears to have become more radicalised, carrying out massacres in remote villages and taking survivors hostage.<\/p>\n
In March, the United States said the ADF was linked to the Islamic State group and identified its leader as Seka Musa Baluku.<\/p>\n
North Kivu and the neighbouring province of Ituri were placed under a so-called state of siege on May 6 in a move aimed at stepping up the fight against armed groups.<\/p>\n
President Felix Tshisekedi replaced senior civilian officials there with army and police officers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Seven soldiers and 15 members of a notorious armed Islamist group have died in three days of clashes in northeastern DR Congo, the army said Tuesday.}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-44011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44011"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=44011"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=44011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}