BENI (Reuters) -An explosion rocked a crowded market in the city of Beni in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday, days after the U.S. embassy in the capital Kinshasa warned there may very well be an assault there.
Police have been tending to casualties, mentioned a Reuters journalist on the scene in Beni, which is in a area the place Congolese and Ugandan forces have launched a marketing campaign in opposition to suspected Islamists. It was not instantly clear what brought about the explosion and whether or not anybody had been killed.
Stéphanie Kahambu, who has a store contained in the market, mentioned the market had been crowded earlier than the explosion, which she mentioned seemed like a bomb.
Kahambu mentioned “everybody fled in totally different instructions… It’s actually unhappy as a result of I noticed 4 individuals who have been significantly injured.”
The U.S. embassy in Kinshasa mentioned on Tuesday that it believed “terrorist assaults” have been deliberate in Beni “in the close to future,” and warned residents in opposition to travelling there.
Beni has seen a number of latest bombings that authorities have blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan militant group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
A suicide bomber struck a Beni restaurant on Christmas Day final yr, killing at the least six individuals in addition to himself, officers mentioned.
Beni was additionally hit by two explosions in June final yr at a Catholic church and at a busy intersection. The solely demise in the 2 incidents was in the second bombing, in which the suspected bomber was killed.
(Reporting by Erikas Mwisi Kambale; Writing by Cooper Inveen;Editing by Alison Williams and Timothy Heritage)
