According to a statement released on Friday by the SITE Intelligence Group, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the release of about 20 detainees during an attack this week in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s North Kivu region.

Witnesses and an army official placed the attack on the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan armed organization that has declared allegiance to the Islamic State.

SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites in the United States, released an IS communiqué on Friday that claimed fighters assaulted and ransacked the village of Nobili before bursting into the jail and recruiting captives.

“The soldiers of the Caliphate attacked a post of the Crusader Congolese army in the town of Nobili, near the Ugandan border, two days ago, causing its personnel to flee,” the statement said, adding that “they were able to free nearly 20 Muslims detained in the prison there.”

ISIS has branded the ADF, alongside fighters in Mozambique, as its “Central Africa Province” (ISCAP), although the two groups are operationally distinct.

The United States attributed the deaths of 849 civilians to the group, which it calls ISIS-DRC, in 2020. More than 1,200 people were killed in similar attacks in 2021, according to United Nations figures.