DRC schools, markets, churches in Beni, close after weekend bombs

DRC schools, markets and churches in the city of Beni have been closed for 48 hours ollowing three bomb attacks that sparked fears of further violence.

By Seros Muyisi

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Beni on Monday closed its schools, markets and churches for 48 hours after three bomb attacks over the weekend sparked fears of further violence.

The attacks included the first targeting a Catholic Church building and the first suicide bombing in the region, which has declared a “state of siege” after a string of massacres carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia.

Beni Mayor Narcisse Muteba announced a curfew late on Sunday after the third attack, saying “everyone should go inside because we have information that something else is being planned”.

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On Monday Muteba ordered all schools, churches and markets closed for two days. 

“I don’t want to see any crowds, but we are calling on everyone to remain calm,” he said in a statement.

Muteba, a police colonel who replaced the city’s civilian leader a few weeks ago, also asked that anyone wanting to enter Beni carry their identity papers.

Only a few motorcycle taxis and private cars could be seen along the city’s main arteries early Monday, while shops were shuttered and markets were closed.

A few restaurants opened in the afternoon, but customers were scarce.

‘Fear in our bellies’

“We have fear in our bellies when we walk the streets of Beni,” said Jeannine Kashauri, a nurse. “Leaving home means taking risks.”

The measures come after a makeshift bomb went off in a Catholic church in Beni on Sunday morning, injuring two women, followed just hours later by a suicide bombing outside a bar.

The day before, a bomb exploded next to a petrol station on the outskirts of Beni without causing any damage.

The army said that the suicide bomber was “a Ugandan citizen who went by the name Ngudi Abdallah, and was very active alongside his leader, the sinister Amigo,” an ADF commander.

The office of the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, Bintou Keita, issued a statement Monday calling the attacks “cowardly and cruel, aimed at sowing terror and confusion in the civilian population”.

ALSO READ | Two people injured in DRC church bomb blast

The army asked Beni residents to “report any suspicious movement, to dissociate themselves from the armed groups and to rally behind the armed forces”.

A ‘state of siege’

Sunday’s attack at the church in predominantly Catholic Beni took place just an hour before a children’s confirmation ceremony was due to be held.

“I had just entered the church, I hadn’t even managed to sit down, I heard ‘boom’… Blood started flowing from my mouth,” one of the women wounded in the blast, Antoinette Kavira, told AFP from her hospital bed.

Beni is in the North Kivu province, one of two regions President Felix Tshisekedi placed under a “state of siege” on May 6 in a bid to clamp down on militia violence.

The ADF is the deadliest of an estimated 122 armed militias that roam the mineral-rich east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that ran from 1996 to 2003.

Historically a Ugandan Islamist group, it has holed up in eastern DRC since 1995.

The ADF is accused of having killed 6 000 people since 2013, according to the Catholic episcopate.

And the Kivu Security Tracker monitor says it has killed more than 1 200 civilians in the Beni area alone since 2017.

In March, the United States said the ADF was linked to the Islamic State group.

Source: AFP

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