Gunmen organized a prison break in which two policemen were killed, and as a result, more than 800 inmates have fled from a prison in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
According to Captain Antony Mualushayi, the military spokesman in the Beni district, armed individuals “attacked Kakwangura central prison in the town of Mutembo” late on Tuesday.
He stated on Wednesday that “the initial toll, which is still tentative, is two officers murdered,” adding that an attacker had also passed away.
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.
Mualushayi said an “unidentified Mai-Mai group” carried out the attack. The term Mai-Mai refers to an ethnic self-defence organisation, which are legion in the DRC’s troubled east.
But a respected US-based monitor, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), said on Twitter that the suspects were the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) — a bloody militia that the Daesh terror group says is its regional affiliate.
At least two police died and all the inmates escaped, the KST added.
The ADF has been blamed for thousands of deaths in eastern DRC, especially in the Beni area, and for attacks in neighbouring Uganda.
The east of the DRC, a vast country the size of continental western Europe, has been unstable for decades.
Scores of armed groups roam the region, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that flared at the end of the last century.
