The suicide bomber who set off his bomb on Christmas Day in Beni, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) killed seven people and injured 20, according to a new report released on Sunday by the authorities. The first official report on Saturday reported five people killed in the explosion caused by the suicide bomber in a restaurant in central Beni, in the province of North Kivu.
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The authorities immediately accused the rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) of being responsible for the attack. The deadliest group in the DRC, the ADF are also accused by Uganda of being responsible for recent attacks on its soil, claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State, which presents this group as “his province of Central Africa”(Islamic State in Central Africa, ISCAP).
“The suicide bomber, prevented by security guards from accessing the bar crowded with customers, activated the bomb at the entrance. The still provisional toll shows six dead, including the suicide bomber, and 13 wounded admitted to hospitals», Wrote Brigadier General Sylvain Ekenge, spokesman for the military governor of North Kivu, in a statement attributing the attack to the ADF. A few minutes after the explosion, an AFP correspondent saw three shredded bodies. The town hall had called on residents to return home, for fear of further attacks.
A source from the town hall of Beni told AFP that among those killed, “there are two children“. “Among the wounded are the two deputy mayors of the municipalities of Mulekera and Ruwenzori“, She added, indicating that”the desperate ADF terrorists activated their sleeper cells in the town of Beni to launch actions against peaceful citizens“.
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The bomb exploded inside the restaurant “In Box“, Located in the center of the city of Beni, where more than thirty people celebrated Christmas, according to two witnesses interviewed by AFP. Debris of chairs, tables, glasses and bottles are strewn in the restaurant, noted an AFP correspondent.
“I was sitting there. There was a parked motorcycle. Suddenly the motorbike took off, then there was a deafening noise», Testified to AFP Nicolas Ekila, host of a radio station in Beni. A police vehicle took the injured to a nearby medical center, which was immediately closed to the public.
Thousands of civilians killed
On June 27, an explosion of a homemade bomb in a Catholic church injured two women. On the same day, a bomb carrier was killed when his device exploded near a bar and not far from a mosque. The day before another machine had exploded not far from a gas station, without causing damage.
The authorities had already accused the ADF rebels of being responsible for these attacks in Beni. North Kivu and Ituri have been under a state of siege since early May, an exceptional measure which gave full powers to the military but which has so far failed to stop the abuses by armed groups.
In these two provinces of the DRC, the Congolese and Ugandan armies have been carrying out joint military operations against ADF positions since November 30. This group is historically a rebel coalition of Ugandan origin, the largest group of which was Muslim, which opposed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
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But he settled in eastern DRC in 1995, becoming the deadliest of many rebel groups in the region. The deaths of thousands of civilians are attributed to them during the last decade in the DRC, as well as the bombings in the Ugandan capital Kampala. The United States placed the ADF on its list of “terrorist groups»Affiliated with ISIS jihadists.