Suicide bombing in DRC: death toll rises to 7
Steph Deschamps / December 27, 2021
The suicide bomber who set off his bomb on Christmas Day in Beni, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), killed seven people and wounded 20, according to new figures released Sunday by authorities.
The first official report on Saturday was that five people were killed in the explosion caused by the suicide bomber in a restaurant in the center of Beni, in North Kivu province. The authorities immediately accused the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels of being responsible for the attack. At present, the provisional death toll stands at eight, including a captain of the 22nd brigade who was at the restaurant with his wife and children, as well as the suicide bomber, Patrick Muyaya, Minister of Communication and spokesman for the Congolese government, said at a press conference. There are also 20 wounded, including two young girls, two young boys, two women with fractured lower limbs, two women with serious injuries, as well as two local administrative officials, he added. As for the suicide bomber, his identification is difficult, said Lieutenant-General Constant Ndima, military governor of North Kivu.
We could only recover his head. He was completely shredded by the explosion. But we will succeed because we have a data bank, he told the press. Lieutenant-General Ndima invited his constituents to be strong and vigilant because no part of the country will be yielded to the enemy ADF which wants to install a caliphate in the Great Lakes region. North Kivu and the neighboring province of Ituri have been under a state of siege since the beginning of May, an exceptional measure that has given full powers to the military but has so far failed to stop the atrocities of armed groups. In these two provinces, the Congolese and Ugandan armies have been conducting joint operations since November 30 against positions of the ADF, a rebel group that originated in Uganda. The most deadly group in the DRC, the ADF is also accused by Kampala of being responsible for recent attacks on its soil, claimed by the jihadist organization Islamic State (EI), which presents the group as its province in Central Africa (Iscap).