
Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 19 people and burned a medical facility in a raid on a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday morning, local officials reported.
The attack, which occurred around 1 a.m. local time in the village of Kirindera, took place just a few kilometers from another attack on a village that killed at least 35 people last week.
The army blamed the earlier attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed group based in eastern Congo that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State and conducts frequent raids on villages.
“Gunfire was heard around Kirindera. The ADF arrived, they set fire to a hospital after looting it of medicines, and they set fire to a hotel,” a resident of the raided area said according to Reuters.
He added that the militants kidnapped several others, who are now missing. The details of the burned buildings and the death toll were confirmed by two regional officials.
The ADF was created in Uganda before moving to eastern Congo in the 1990s and has been blamed for thousands of deaths in the last decade.