Last weekend saw a rash of mass casualty attacks in Africa, with atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burkina Faso, and Nigeria claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) and other terrorist groups.
ISIS on Saturday used its channel on the secure messaging system Telegram to claim responsibility for killing approximately 20 civilians in the village of Musandaba in the eastern DRC. A spokesman for the DRC military said the killings were perpetrated with machetes.
Despite the ISIS claim of responsibility on Telegram, DRC military officials blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel group that migrated to the Congo in the 1990s and swore fealty to the Islamic State in 2019. The ADF seeks to overthrow the governments of both the DRC and Uganda to create an Islamic “caliphate” like the one ISIS established in Syria and Iraq.
Musandaba is located in North Kivu province, a hot zone for conflict between the DRC military and several insurgent groups. The United Nations estimated in March that more than 100,000 people have been displaced by terrorism and conflict in North Kivu.
The U.N. condemned a similar massacre attributed to ADF in the neighboring province of Ituri last Sunday and Monday.
Red Cross volunteers bury the remains of civilians killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo North Kivu province village of Mukondi on Thursday, March 9, 2023. At least 36 were killed when the Allied Democratic Forces, a group with links to the Islamic State group, attacked the village and burned residents’ huts (AP Photo/Socrate Mumbere).
In Burkina Faso, 44 civilians were killed by “armed terrorist groups” in attacks on the villages of Kourakou and Tondibi near the Niger border.
Locals said the terrorists attacked to retaliate for the hanging of two jihadis who tried to steal cattle last week. Terrorist groups linked to both ISIS and al-Qaeda are active in the region. In fact, jihadist insurgents control approximately 40 percent of the country.
“All night long, we heard gunfire. It was on Friday morning that we saw that there were several dozen dead,” a resident of Kourakou told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Burkina Faso has been ruled by a military junta under Capt. Ibrahim Traore since October. The previous government suspended counterterrorism cooperation with France last summer.
Newly installed military chief Col. Celestin Simpore vowed before the Kourakou and Tondibi attacks that he would increase the tempo of the “dynamic offensive” against terrorists and “force armed groups to lay down their weapons.”
“Certain operations will be carried out in coordination with fellow armies in neighboring countries,” he said.
In Nigeria, at least 74 people were reportedly killed in two attacks by gunmen late last week.
On Saturday, the police in southern Benue State said 28 corpses were recovered from a camp for displaced people. Eyewitnesses said a group of gunmen appeared at the camp and opened fire for unknown reasons.
The other 46 confirmed victims were killed when nomadic Fulani herdsmen allegedly attacked a rural village called Umogidi during a funeral. Herders and villages constantly clash over territory in the area, causing a steep decline in agricultural yields from Nigeria’s breadbasket region.
Local officials said the death toll could rise because many residents of the village are still missing.
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