{"id":3049,"date":"2022-08-20T08:17:19","date_gmt":"2022-08-20T07:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opendoorsuk.org\/?p=3049"},"modified":"2024-02-14T10:52:37","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T10:52:37","slug":"news-latest-news-drc-islamic-attacks","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/blog\/news\/latest-news\/news-latest-news-drc-islamic-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"DRC: More than 100 people killed in Islamic extremist attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the past month, at least 100 people have been killed by an Islamic extremist group in a series of attacks in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A large number of those killed were Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n    <section class=\"standard-page \" role=\"document\" style=\"\">\n        <div class=\"container\">\n            \n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"930\" height=\"399\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/08\/drc-930.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3051\" srcset=\"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/08\/drc-930.jpg 930w, https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/08\/drc-930-300x129.jpg 300w, https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2022\/08\/drc-930-768x329.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 930px) 100vw, 930px\" \/><figcaption><em>The AFP continues to increase its deadly attacks across DRC<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Attacked with machetes and guns<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On 14 January, approximately 46 people were killed in Ituri province by militants who are believed to be part of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). The community that was attacked belongs to the Pygmy ethnic group \u2013 there are about half a million people belonging to this ethnic group in DRC, and they face extensive persecution and discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On 4 January, an estimated 22 civilians were killed in an overnight raid on the village of Mwenda, in the Beni region of neighbouring North Kivu province. A community leader reported that guns and machetes were used, and that at least 17 nearby villagers had been murdered with machetes a week earlier. Around the same time, the ADF killed another 25 people in the village of Tingwe, in the same region. Unlike the Ituri province attack, most of those killed in these three attacks were Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese predominantly Christian communities are attacked by an Islamic extremist group with a clear Islamic expansionist agenda,\u201d says Illia Djadi, an Open Doors spokesperson on freedom of religion or belief in sub-Saharan Africa. \u201cIt is a reminder of what is happening in other parts of the central Sahel region \u2013 groups like Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, for example. The ideology, the agenda of establishing a &#8216;caliphate&#8217; in the region, and the way they operate is the same, and we can see how they afflict terrible suffering on innocent people.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Soaring violence in DRC<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">DRC has a very high percentage of Christians, at over 95 per cent of the population, but Islamic extremist violence has soared over the past year and continues to worsen. This is the main reason that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/countries-watch\/democratic-republic-of-congo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">DRC is at number 40<\/a>\u00a0on the Open Doors World Watch List 2021, up from number 57 the previous year. The violence that Christians face in this country is among the very worst in the world \u2013 it\u2019s only the (relatively) low levels of persecution in other spheres of life that mean DRC isn\u2019t even higher on the World Watch List.<\/p>\n\n\n    <div class=\"pull-left-wrapper \">\n        <blockquote><p>&#8220;We urgently call on the national government and the international community to do everything they can to protect innocent lives&#8221;\r\n<\/p> <cite>ILLIA DJADI, OPEN DOORS<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n    <\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ADF is a militant Islamic group with a clear mission of attacking, kidnapping and killing Christians, as well as training and sending jihadists to other countries in Africa. The group was formed in 1996, merging several existing rebel groups, and initially focused its destructive action on Uganda. More recently, it has expanded into DRC. In October 2019, the army in DRC started an offensive against the group \u2013 and, since then, the ADF have scaled up the number and intensity of their attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;A war has been declared against the DRC,&#8221; says Carly Nzanzu Kasivita, a governor of North Kivu. He called for a \u2018national and international mobilisation\u2019 to combat the ongoing violence. A UN report from 2020 agreed that the situation is dire, suggesting that \u2018widespread, systematic and extremely brutal\u2019 human rights abuses by the ADF \u2018could constitute, by their nature and scope, crimes against humanity and war crimes\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A jihadist network<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The UN&#8217;s Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, adds that the ADF is connected to other jihadist groups across Africa. \u201cIn my opinion the ADF today is part of a network that starts in Libya and stretches to the Sahel, to the Lake Chad region, and which is present in Mozambique,&#8221; he\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rfi.fr\/fr\/emission\/20190903-rdc-il-y-changement-radical-le-rapport-entre-le-gouvernement-monusco\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">told RFI<\/a>. The ADF has not formally linked itself with so-called Islamic State (IS), but IS has started to claim responsibility for some of the attacks by ADF and has called Congo the \u2018Central Africa Province\u2019 of the \u2018caliphate\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe need to pay attention to these events because what is happening in eastern DRC, the killing of innocent civilians on an almost daily basis, is an underreported tragedy,&#8221; says Illia Djadi. \u201cWe want to raise the alarm and we urgently call on the national government and the international community to do everything they can to protect innocent lives and to restore peace in this troubled region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n        <\/div>\n    <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the past month, at least 100 people have been killed by an Islamic extremist group in a series of attacks in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A large number of those killed were Christians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":3050,"parent":8268,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-3049","news","type-news","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v20.8 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>DRC: More than 100 people killed in Islamic extremist attacks - Open Doors Ireland<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DRC: More than 100 people killed in Islamic extremist attacks\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the past month, at least 100 people have been killed by an Islamic extremist group in a series of attacks in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 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A large number of those killed were Christians.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/3049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/8268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/connect.opendoorsuk.org\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}