On October 31, 2020, jihadists from the Islamic State's Central Africa Province (ISCAP) attacked the village of Lisasa, Beni Territory, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing over twenty-one civilians after brief clashes with UPLC Mai-Mai militiamen. The massacre came just several days after ISCAP slaughtered nineteen civilians in the village of Baeti.
Background.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019, and began a campaign against Congolese authorities and rebels in North Kivu as the newly-formed Central Africa Province of the Islamic State. The campaign also heavily targeted Christian villages, and the ADF perpetrated numerous massacres. In Beni in October 2020, ADF fighters broke hundreds of their compatriots out of a jail near the town. The jailbreak encouraged ADF fighters to continue their rampage in areas of Beni Territory that hadn't seen massacres for four years. In the town of Baeti on October 28, ADF fighters massacred nineteen people. The Lisasa massacre occurred a year and one day after the start of a counter-insurgency campaign by the Congolese government against the ADF.
Massacre.
Prior to the massacre, the village was defended by militiamen of the Mai-Mai group Union of Patriots for the Liberation of the Congo (UPLC). ISCAP jihadists attacked the village of Lisasa at one in the morning of October 31, with some fighters engaging in clashes with UPLC and armed civilians and other fighters ransacking the village, looting houses and killing civilians. The jihadists attacked the village's health center and set fire to it, and then desecrated a Catholic church in the village. Massacres were also carried out in the neighboring villages of Kitsimba and Kamwiri.
The preliminary death toll was seventeen civilians killed across all three villages, fifteen of the dead being women. Twenty people were also kidnapped. Four bodies were found the next day, bringing the death toll to twenty-one killed. Some of the kidnapped residents were health workers at the hospital in Lisasa.
Aftermath.
The Congolese government did not release a statement in the immediate aftermath of the massacre. Josep Borrell condemned the attack on November 1. That same day, ISCAP claimed responsibility for the massacre in Lisasa, along with the prison break in Kangbayi. In the statement by ISCAP, they stated the motive of attacking Lisasa was to kill Christians.
References.
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