Amnesty accuses IS-linked fighters of eastern DR Congo war crimes

Armed people patrol the streets of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [AFP]

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused militants in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo linked to the Islamic State group of "rampant" war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a group set up by former Ugandan rebels who have since pledged allegiance to IS, is one of the many militias that have terrorised the mineral-rich Congolese east for three decades.

Renowned for their extreme cruelty towards civilians, ADF militants are at large across the provinces of North Kivu in the east and Ituri in the northeast, near the borders with Uganda and Rwanda.

In a report, Amnesty accused the group of kidnappings, keeping forced labourers, recruiting child soldiers and "crimes against women and girls, including forced marriage, forced pregnancy and various other forms of sexual violence".

"These abuses constitute war crimes which the world must not continue to ignore. As part of widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity," the rights group's secretary-general Agnes Callamard said.

Basing its findings on the testimonies of 71 people collected between October and February, Amnesty said that the ADF attacked civilians to steal vital supplies, including food and medicines, as well as "in retaliation for military operations".

According to the rights group, the ADF uses the women it kidnaps -- who are then forcibly converted to Islam and handed to its militants as sex slaves -- as a way to attract more fighters to its cause.

Seven former hostages abducted last year told Amnesty that their families had to pay ransoms ranging from $100 to $10,000 to buy back their liberty.

And the rights group named the ADF as among the biggest recruiters of child soldiers in the DRC, a country where the use of minors in wartime is widespread.

While the Ugandan army has been deployed in North Kivu and Ituri since 2021 to help the Congolese military fight the ADF, their joint efforts have so far failed to put a stop to the violence.