By Spy Uganda Correspondent
 Islamist rebels have killed at least nine civilians in a string of attacks on Thursday and Friday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the army and local authorities said.
The attackers used machetes and guns to kill the victims who were working in fields in a rural area straddling the border of conflict-torn Ituri and North Kivu provinces, local traditional chief Fataki Sabuni said.
Two women were among the dead, he added.
The army blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group originally from Uganda, now based in eastern Congo, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group and mounts frequent attacks.
“Today, I myself saw and transported nine bodies to the morgue,” the military administrator of North Kivu’s Beni territory, Colonel Charles Ehuta Omeanga, told the media.
“The assailants are roaming the area and killing anyone they meet along the way, but our soldiers are in pursuit,” he said.
Decades of conflict between the army and myriad rebel groups has destabilised eastern Congo and fuelled a long-running humanitarian crisis.
Attacks intensified last year and the number of people displaced stood at nearly 5.7 million as of end-2023, according to the U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA.
The attack come amidst scaled up operations by Southern African Development Community (SADC) Mission in the DR Congo which was deployed on 15 December 2023 to support the Government of the DRC to restore peace and security in the eastern DRC.
SADC replaced the East African Community Regional Forces (EACRF) whose contingents were deployed in North Kivu and Ituri at the end of 2022 to combat armed groups principally the M23.
DRC has witnessed an increase in conflicts and instability caused by the resurgence of armed groups which have claimed thousands of lives in recent months.
