A despicable act! Islamists butcher 23 people in Democratic Republic of Congo

In the town of Beni in the Democratic Republic of Congo, suspected Ugandan rebels are believed to have killed at least 23 people, in their second attack within two days.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The attacks, and calls for assistance from the local governor have prompted the officials charged with the United Nations peacekeeping mission to call for military action.

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In 2013, troops from the U.N. peacekeeping force and the Congo defeated the M23 insurgency, a conflict which posed the greatest threat to the government's stability since the African nation's last war formally ended back in 2003.

The Ugandan rebels from the Islamist ADF-NALU group, killed the 23 people with hatchets and machetes, the governor of North Kivu Province, Julien Paluku, reported.

"It's the ADF-NALU. The methods they use...these are not deaths from local rebels here, Mai-Mai or groups like that," he said.

"This is a genocide, the way in which the ADF kills these people," said a spokesman for the Civil Society of North Kivu, Omar Kavota.

Among the victims of the attack was a Congolese soldier.

The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Congo, Martin Kobler, said that these ongoing attacks were "outrageous." Kobler called for renewed military operations against the Islamist group.

"I call for decisive joint military actions of FARDC (Congolese army) and MONUSCO (U.N. peacekeeping mission) in order to relieve the population from the terror imposed by the ADF," he said.

The ADF-NALU group is allied with several other local and foreign groups in the eastern border regions of the Congo. Right now, the U.N. estimates that the ADF-NALU group has about 500 fighters.

In January of 2014, the Congolese government, with help from U.N. air support, launched an operation against the Islamist group in retaliation for a series of attacks.

Lambert Mende, a government spokesman, said that the ADF-NALU had been defeated by the Congolese government.

"Just because there's a terrorist act in Beni doesn't mean that the forces of the army of Congo did not defeat the ADF....Now they have changed tactics. It was a terrorist attack. You don't need an army to commit terrorism."

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