A suicide bomber killed at least five people in a crowded night spot in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Beni on Saturday, local officials reported.
Officials blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia, one of the deadliest armed groups in the region and claimed by the Islamic State group as its arm in central Africa.
“The suicide bomber, who was prevented from accessing the bar full of customers by security, set off the bomb at the entrance,” said a statement from military officials running North Kivu province.
Another 13 people were being treated for their injuries in hospitals, the statement added, describing the death toll as provisional.
Shortly after the blast, Narcisse Muteba, the colonel who ran the city during the state of emergency in the east of the country, had asked residents to return home for their own safety.
An AFP correspondent saw the remains of three bodies at the scene of the explosion, the In Box restaurant. The remains of tables, chairs, bottles and glasses were scattered around the scene of the explosion.
A city council source told AFP that two children were among the dead, as well as two local officials.
More than 30 people were celebrating Christmas there when the bomb exploded, two witnesses told AFP.
“I was sitting there,” local radio host Nicolas Ekila told AFP. “There was a motorcycle parked there. Suddenly the bike took off, then there was a deafening noise ”.
A police vehicle transported the wounded to a nearby medical center, which was immediately sealed off.
– Operations against the ADF – On June 27 in Beni, an improvised bomb explosion in a Catholic church wounded two women, the same day a man was killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded.
The day before, another device exploded near a gas station without causing any damage. The authorities blamed these attacks on the ADF.
Beni, in North Kivu province, on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Uganda, has been the scene of regular clashes between the army and the ADF.
North Kivu and neighboring Ituri province have been under a “state of siege” since May, an emergency measure in which the army has taken effective control but has so far failed to stop attacks by armed militias.
On November 30, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda launched a joint operation against the ADF in the east of the country to try to quell bloody ADF attacks. Uganda has also blamed the group for a series of attacks on its territory.
The ADF was historically a rebel Ugandan coalition whose largest group consisted of Muslims who opposed the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
But it settled in eastern DRC in 1995, becoming the deadliest of the outlaw forces in the troubled region.
He has been blamed for the slaughter of thousands of civilians over the past decade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the bombings in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
The Islamic State group presents the ADF as its regional branch: the Central African Province of the Islamic State, or ISCAP.
On March 11 of this year, the United States placed the ADF on its list of “terrorist groups” affiliated with ISIS jihadists.