Dozens dead in the DR Congo: massacre in the middle of the Ebola area

They have packed their belongings in sacks and tied them to motorcycles - thousands of children, women, men and old people have fled in recent days from renewed attacks by the Islamist rebel organization ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The latest ADF attack occurred on the night of Thursday to Friday in the town of Cantine, around 50 kilometers from the city of Beni in the Congo government-held part of the war-torn North Kivu province. Justin Paluku, a local civil society representative, confirmed to Congolese journalists: “So far we have counted 33 bodies and more than 50 houses burned down.” Other sources report over 35 deaths.

A health center was also set on fire. Patients were also treated in isolated areas against the deadly Ebola virus. Christian Kakule, director of the Kelekele Health Center in Cantine, warned that there were Ebola infected people among the 180 patients who fled: “High-risk contacts and other people who were under observation have all fled,” he said. “We are concerned that suspected cases who are allowed to move freely in this way could become a source of transmission and trigger an outbreak of the disease.”

The town of Cantine is located in the middle of the Ebola area - where the deadly virus is currently spreading the fastest. The World Health Organization (WHO) is currently reporting more than 10,600 confirmed cases in the DR Congo in total, of which around 6,200 have died.

The Ebola outbreak officially began in May in Ituri province, north of Beni. While the number of cases in Ituri is now decreasing, they continue to rise in the government-controlled part of North Kivu adjacent to Ituri. The reason for this is the insecurity, because there are numerous armed groups in this region - in some cases, Ebola teams and aid organizations cannot penetrate the remote villages in the jungle. The mass exodus of the population from the ADF makes an undetected spread of Ebola more likely.

The ADF is a rebel group originally founded by Ugandan Muslims that entrenched itself in the densely forested, mountainous border area between Uganda and the DR Congo in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the commanders have increasingly recruited Congolese. The militia officially declares its allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) and receives equipment and training from its international network. Based on the number of civilian deaths, the ADF is one of the most brutal militias in the DR Congo.

A new report from US think tank The Sentry suggests that the ADF is funded primarily through illegal gold trading. It controls gold mining areas in the jungle and smuggles the precious metal into neighboring Uganda, where it is refined and exported to Dubai. The Sentry estimates that the ADF earns more than $1 million annually from gold exports.

A joint military operation by Congolese and Ugandan special forces against the ADF has been underway for five years. The military operation in the dense jungle, where there were hardly any roads or bridges over the rivers, proved to be a logistical challenge from the outset. Despite stationing thousands of soldiers, it was not possible to render the ADF incapable of fighting - on the contrary: the fighters retreated deeper and deeper into the forests away from the border, where they regularly attacked villages.

According to experts working on behalf of the US-based Bridgeway Foundation to persuade ADF fighters to surrender, the latest attack was led by a Tanzanian ADF commander nicknamed Abuwakas. In recent months he has carried out several targeted attacks on villages within a radius of 120 kilometers. According to expert Ryan O'Farrell, the attack shows how the ADF has "divided itself into small, highly mobile attack units capable of operating autonomously over long distances."