Three people were killed and seven more wounded Monday in an ambush in eastern DR Congo blamed on a notorious Islamist-rooted militia, local officials said.
Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) gunmen opened fire on a vehicle that was taking traders from the town of Oicha to a market in Eringeti, said Donat Kibwana, administrator of Beni territory in troubled North Kivu province.The toll is "three dead, seven wounded and a number of missing," Kibwana said.
He added that the militiamen disappeared into the bush after the army arrived on the scene.
The toll was confirmed by Noella Katongerwaki, a representative of grassroots groups in the Beni area.
Dozens of militias operate in the North and South Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country the size of western continental Europe.
The ADF, a group that arose in western Uganda in 1995, has been blamed for massacring hundreds of civilians in the Beni area.
In July, ADF men wielding guns and machetes killed 12 civilians, two of them children.
The latest attack came just four days after President Felix Tshisekedi made a lightning trip to Beni, where he announced at a rally that the government was preparing to "launch the final attack against ADF fighters in the coming days, to wipe them out once and for all."
The DRC's army has acknowledged the loss of 1,662 troops in clashes with the ADF since 2014.
