To ‘sabotage exams’, militants attack school in DR Congo, rape girls

At least 700 students and teachers had to flee the makeshift exam centre after militants attacked a school in DR Congo’s volatile east to “sabotage the exams”. Some girls, authorities said, were raped by the armed ‘bandits’. 

The school-leaving exams that began on Monday, had earlier beeen postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Nyange Saluba, an official with a civil society group said that the attack was staged by the Banyamulenga militia, a group of Congolese Tutsis, that has been waging war in the eastern region for several months. 

“We have chased them away,” Captain Dieudonne Kasereka, the local army spokesman told AFP, adding that the attackers wanted to “sabotage the exams.

Several hundred kilometres (miles) further north, a group of armed men staged an overnight attack on a centre housing 32 students at Isiro, the main city of the Haut-Uele province.

The 16 boys and 16 girls “had been gathered here to sit for the exam,” local priest Georges Semende told AFP.

“These bandits raped the girls,” he said. The priest said that the girls, despite the trauma, have agreed to take the exam and added that an investigation has been initiated by the authorities. 

The local governor’s spokesman, Felicien Nangana, confirmed one rape. 

On Thursday, armed men attacked an examination centre, killing two primary students and wounding two others.

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the school calendar in the country, where over half of the over 80 million population is aged under 20.