An elderly woman and two children perished when suspected rebels from the Islamic State-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) set fire to their home in a village in western Uganda on Monday, local authorities said on Tuesday.
The attack took place in a remote village in the Kamwenge district, already the scene of an attack a week earlier attributed to the ADF in which ten villagers were killed and burned. According to Kamwenge district commissioner Isiah Byarugaba, the attackers set fire to a house in which the victims were staying.
“The ADF rebels killed three people, an elderly woman and two of her grandchildren. They were burnt to death in their house last night,” he said. The army and police are in pursuit of the rebels, he added. “We are on the ground assessing the situation and mobilizing the local community to prevent such cowardly attacks by ADF terrorists against innocent civilians”, he added.
Originally Ugandan rebels with a Muslim majority, the ADF have been active since the mid-1990s in eastern DRC, where they have killed thousands of civilians. In 2019, they pledged allegiance to the EI, which now claims some of their actions and presents them as its “Central African province”.
Uganda and the DRC launched a joint offensive in 2021 to drive the ADF out of their Congolese strongholds, without so far succeeding in putting an end to the group’s attacks. In October, two tourists, a British and a South African honeymooner and their guide, were killed in Queen Elizabeth Park (west), in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.
In June, 42 people, including 37 students, were killed in a high school in western Uganda in an attack also attributed to the ADF.