More than 800 prisoners have fled from an eastern, DR. Congo, DRC, prison after gunmen staged a jailbreak in which two policemen were killed.
Captain Antony Mualushayi, the military spokesman in the Beni district, reported that assailants “attacked Kakwangura central prison in the town of Mutembo” late on Tuesday.
He stated, “The preliminary death toll is two officers slain,” and added that an attacker had apparently perished.
During the jailbreak, all but 49 of the 872 inmates had escaped, according to a prison service source who spoke on the record under the condition of anonymity.
An “unknown Mai-Mai group,” according to Mualushayi, was responsible for the assault. The word “Mai-Mai” refers to an ethnic self-defense group that is widespread in the unrest-ridden east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a brutal militia that the Islamic State group claims is its regional affiliate, were identified as the suspects on Twitter, according to a reputable US-based watchdog, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST).
The KST continued, “All the prisoners escaped, and at least two cops killed.”
Thousands of killings in eastern DRC, particularly in the Beni region, as well as assaults in neighboring Uganda have been attributed to the ADF.
The eastern region of the DRC, a sizable nation the size of continental western Europe, has long been unstable.
Numerous armed factions are present throughout the area as a result of two regional wars that broke out around the turn of the 20th century.