On Sunday, the discovery of seven bodies in an advanced state of decomposition on the outskirts of Mangina, a town located in the Beni territory of North Kivu province in Congo was reported. The victims were identified as villagers who were executed with machetes by militiamen linked to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an extremely violent Ugandan group created in the 1990s to which the United Nations has charged with murdering 1,200 civilians in 2021.
According to Mayor Rocky Muvunga of Mangina, “They are residents of my town. The bodies were found in their fields, outside my commune. The day the ADF had planned to come and attack Mangina, any peasant they found was massacred.”
The young people from the area who discovered the bodies alerted wazalendo (patriots in Swahili), self-defense groups who accompanied them. A local youth leader, Kakule Mbafumoja confirmed this and added that “We discovered seven bodies, including those of two women near Taha and Basisale. Wazalendos from Butuha accompanied us. All the bodies were buried and decomposing.”
