Day: December 25, 2021

BENI, CONGO — A suicide bomber attacked a restaurant and bar Saturday as dozens of patrons gathered on Christmas Day, killing at least six others in an eastern Congolese town where Islamic extremists are known to be active.

Heavy gunfire rang out shortly after the bomb went off, with panicked crowds fleeing the town’s center.

Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, spokesperson for the governor of North Kivu, said that security guards had blocked the bomber from entering the crowded bar and so the person instead detonated the explosives at the entrance.

“We call on people to remain vigilant and to avoid crowded areas during the holiday season,” he said in a statement. “In the city and territory of Beni, it is difficult, in these times to know who is who.”

Loud noise, black smoke

Rachel Magali had been at the restaurant-bar for about three hours with her sister-in-law and several others when she heard a loud noise outside.

“Suddenly we saw black smoke surrounding the bar and people started to cry,” she told The Associated Press. “We rushed to the exit where I saw people lying down. There were green plastic chairs scattered everywhere and I also saw heads and arms no longer attached. It was really horrible.”

Among the dead were two children, according to Mayor Narcisse Muteba, who is also a police colonel. At least 13 other people were wounded and taken to a local hospital.

“Investigations are underway to find the perpetrators of this terrorist attack,” he told The Associated Press.

Rebels vex town

The town has long been targeted by rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, a group that traces its origins to neighboring Uganda. But an Islamic State group affiliate claimed responsibility for two explosions in Beni in June, deepening fears that religious extremism has taken hold there, too.

Those explosions included the first known suicide bombing in eastern Congo, a Ugandan man who blew himself up outside of a bar. The Islamic State group’s Central Africa Province later said that the suicide bomber was targeting Christians. The other explosion that day went off inside a Catholic church, wounding two people.

Residents of the town have repeatedly expressed anger over the ongoing insecurity despite an army offensive and the presence of U.N. peacekeepers in Beni. In recent years, the town also has suffered through an Ebola epidemic and has seen several smaller outbreaks of the disease.

Source: Voice of America

OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO — Authorities in Burkina Faso have declared a two-day period of mourning after suspected militants killed at least 41 members of a government-backed civilian militia in the country’s desert north this week.

A column of civilian fighters from the Homeland Defense Volunteers (VDP), a group the government funds and trains to contain Islamist insurgents, was ambushed on Thursday as it swept a remote area in the northern Loroum province, authorities said Saturday.

It was one of the heaviest single-day losses the civilian militia has experienced to date and occurred one month after an attack on a gendarmerie post killed 53 people, the worst strike on Burkinabe security forces in years.

“In this painful circumstance and as a tribute to the valiant VDP and civilians who fell in defense of the homeland, the president of Burkina Faso decrees a national mourning period of forty-eight hours, starting Sunday,” government spokesperson Alkassoum Maiga said in a statement.

Authorities have faced repeated protests in recent months over their perceived failure to curb a four-year Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands across Africa’s Sahel Region and prompted more than a million people to flee their homes.

Militants linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State have inflicted heavy casualties on the region’s armies, killing soldiers in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali almost every week in scattered attacks.

The Burkinabe army said about 100 militants were killed earlier this month in a joint offensive involving hundreds of troops from Burkina Faso and Niger, who also seized guns, improvised explosive devices and hundreds of motorcycles.

Source: Voice of America