The attack, which occurred around 1am (23:00 GMT) in the village of Kirindera in North Kivu province, took place just a few kilometres from another attack on a village that killed at least 35 people last week.
The army blamed last week’s attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed group based in eastern Congo that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State. A resident of a nearby village and a member of local civil society blamed Sunday’s attack on the ADF.
“The ADF arrived, they set fire to a hospital after looting it with medicines, and they set fire to a hotel,” said Sadame Patanguli, the resident.
He said the militants kidnapped several others, who are now missing. The details of the burned buildings and the death toll were confirmed by two regional officials.
The ADF was created in Uganda before moving to eastern Congo in the 1990s, and has been blamed for thousands of deaths in the last decade.
The killings have continued despite efforts by the army, which is also fighting the rebel group M23, whose offensive in recent months has displaced 600,000 people. Congo says the group is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, which Rwanda denies.
Meanwhile, public support for the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in eastern Congo, known as Monusco, has plummeted because of what local residents say is its inability to stem the violence.
A delegation from the UN Security Council toured North Kivu this weekend, including to a camp for displaced people.
“There are no magic solutions, it’s not the United Nations that will solve the problem on its own,” said Nicolas de Riviere, the French ambassador to the UN. “We need a political negotiation, we need a security solution.”
(Reporting by Erikas Mwisi and Djaffar Al Katanty; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky, William Maclean.)
Why are we not surprised that the SANDF’s is proving useless ? Everything the cANCer touches turns to dust so why would the SANDF be any different. What also does not help is that the SANDF has too many command officer. This means for every 1 command officer ( generals or admirals ) there are 184 soldiers, which is totally ludicrous. In the insane world of the cANCer, everyone wants to be in charge so they can pig out at the trough of corruption but nobody wants to do the work, which seems to be a very common trait amongst South Africans. No doubt the SANDF soldiers are upset that their dignity is being affronted by the enemy soldiers daring to shoot at them, after all they probably signed up for lounging about the barracks not for war.