25 People killed during Violent Attack in Congo

At least 25 people were killed, Friday, during a violent attack in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), becoming the first terrorist act in 2021 in this troubled country.

Local sources said that the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) was accused of carrying out the attack.

ADF has previously killed about 19 people in eastern DRC in an attack, happened overnight in the remote village of Baeti, the administrator of Beni territory in North Kivu province told AFP.

Seventeen men and two women died, “40 houses and a church [were] burned down [and] several people are missing," Kinos Kathuho, the head of the local civil society, told AFP.

"The army was alerted but did not intervene," Kathuho said.

A spokesman for the armed forces said it "cannot react to this nonsense."

The ADF, which originated in the 1990s as a Ugandan rebel group, is one of more than 100 militias that plague the eastern provinces of the DRC.

On his part, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi affirmed on Saturday that Egypt would continue its support to the DRC, in order to consolidate security and stability in the sisterly African nation.

“During a phone call with Congolese counterpart Félix Tshilombo, Sisi discussed areas of cooperation and coordination, topped by Egypt’s development efforts in Congo,” Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady said.

The two sides also exchanged views on various regional and intentional issues of mutual concern, especially in light of Congo’s imminent chairmanship of the African Union in 2021.