Islamic State-backed rebels killed at least 34 people in an attack at a Catholic church in eastern Congo on Sunday, according to officials.
A civil society leader in Komanda, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, told the AP news agency that the attack was believed to have been carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan Islamist rebel group.
Dieudonne Duranthabo, civil society coordinator, said: “The bodies of the victims are still at the scene of the tragedy, and volunteers are preparing how to bury them in a mass grave that we are preparing in a compound of the Catholic church.”
He condemned the attack “in a town where all the security officials are present” before adding: “We demand military intervention as soon as possible, since we are told the enemy is still near our town.”
Other city officials told the Reuters news agency that 38 people were killed, 15 injured, and several others were still missing.
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Christophe Munyanderu, a human rights activist present at the scene in Komanda, said shots were heard overnight, but people at first thought it was thieves.
“The rebels mainly attacked Christians who were spending the night in the Catholic church,” he said. “Unfortunately, these people were killed with machetes or bullets.”
The ADF was formed by disparate small groups in Uganda in the late 1990s following alleged discontent with former president Yoweri Museveni.
In 2002, following military assaults by Ugandan forces, the group moved its activities to the neighbouring DRC, and has since been responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians.
According to a 2019 report on terrorism from the US Department of State, the ADF established ties with Islamic State in late 2018
It comes after at least five other people were killed in an attack on the nearby village of Machongani, where a search is ongoing.
“They took several people into the bush,” Lossa Dhekana, a civil society leader in Ituri province, told the AP, “we do not know their destination or their number”.
