At least 19 civilians were killed in attacks attributed to Allied Democratic Forces rebels in and around Beni, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s North Kivu province, according to Radio Okapi. The violence affected Ngadi, on the edge of Beni, and farming areas around Vemba to the northeast.
Radio Okapi’s first account said assailants entered Ngadi at about 9:30 p.m. during the night leading into Sunday, May 31. Local sources said they first targeted a camp used by members of a Pygmy community. At least six civilians there were killed with bladed weapons, and several other people remained missing as residents searched the area the next morning. The exact number missing was not known.
The Programme d’assistance aux pygmées, an organization assisting Pygmy communities, condemned the attack and confirmed that six community members had died. Radio Okapi reported that one victim was a performer well known in Beni. Its initial report said neither local authorities nor the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as FARDC, had publicly commented at that point.
That later update broadened both the geographic scope and the casualty count beyond the initial Ngadi report.
A later Radio Okapi report placed the combined death toll at at least 19 across Ngadi and agricultural settlements in Vemba, about 20 kilometres northeast of Beni. It attributed the attacks to ADF rebels. The report said more than six Pygmy people and a similar number of Bantu people were killed using the same method in the same broader episode.
Jean-Paul Kapitula, the civil-protection coordinator in the Beni region, urged the central government to treat insecurity there as a serious threat. He also asked residents to keep sending alerts promptly. Kapitula recalled an October 15, 2014 massacre in Ngadi in which at least 38 people were killed, describing the new deaths against the community’s memory of that earlier attack.
The army subsequently said it was protecting civilians and instructed farming communities to leave all Vemba areas where forces were conducting operations to pursue the attackers. Radio Okapi’s first account noted that Ngadi lies about seven kilometres from central Beni and near at least two FARDC positions. It described the incident as the first attack attributed to the ADF targeting Beni city in more than three years.
The supplied reports do not give a final missing-person count or identify all victims. They establish an evolving toll: six deaths were first documented in Ngadi, before Radio Okapi reported at least 19 civilians killed across Ngadi and Vemba and an army operation underway in the affected farming zones.
