Assailants killed at least nine patients in an attack on a clinic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo overnight, the army said on Friday, blaming the raid on a local militia allied with Islamist fighters.
Insurgents believed to be from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed group that has operated in the dense forests of eastern Congo for decades, attacked a church clinic at around 10.00 p.m. on Thursday night, two witnesses said.
An army spokesman said the attackers were actually from a local militia collaborating with the ADF and using the same methods.
The army killed three fighters and captured one when it responded to the attack in the town of Lume, in North Kivu province, said army spokesman Anthony Mualushay.
He said there were nine dead, including three children, while a nurse at the hospital counted 13 bodies.
"In the hospital ward there were four patients who all burned to death, in the paediatric unit all the mattresses are burned and in the side wards we just collected nine bodies," said Kule Mwenge Salomon, a nurse at Lume health centre.
Kakule Vikere Lem was feeding his father at the clinic when he saw a column of people with torches approaching the town, around 40kms (25 miles) south-east of the city of Beni.
"I fled, thinking that they would spare the hospital, but unfortunately they burned my father in the hospital," Vikere said.
(Reporting by Erikas Mwisi Kambale; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Nellie Peyton, Toby Chopra and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
