AT least 38 people have been killed and 15 others injured in an attack on a church in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The attack, carried out by suspected members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) wielding guns and machetes, took place at the church in Ituri province’s Komanda city early on Sunday.
The ADF, with ties to ISIL (ISIS), is a rebel group that operates in the borderland between Uganda and the DRC, and has routinely conducted attacks against civilian populations.
Several houses and shops were also burned down, and many people remain missing after the attack, which happened while Catholic Christians were attending a prayer vigil at the church, run by the Caritas charity.
“The rebels mainly attacked Christians who were spending the night in the Catholic church,” said Christophe Munyanderu, a human rights activist present at the scene in Komanda. “Unfortunately, these people were killed with machetes or bullets.”
DRC’s Radio Okapi reported the death toll as 43, blaming it on the ADF. “More than 20 victims were killed with bladed weapons during a prayer vigil in a church,” the radio said. “Other bodies were found in burned houses nearby.”
“What we know this morning is that there was an incursion by armed men with machetes into a church not far from Komanda,” DRC army spokesperson Jules Ngongo said.
A civil society leader told The Associated Press news agency that people were shot dead inside and outside the church, adding that they found at least three charred bodies.
“But the search [for bodies] is continuing,” Dieudonne Duranthabo, a civil society coordinator in Komanda, told AP.
“We are truly disappointed because it is incredible that such a situation could occur in a town where all the security officials are present,” Duranthabo said, adding that some people fled the area and moved to Bunia town.
“We demand military intervention as soon as possible, since we are told the enemy is still near our town.”
The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC has condemned a recent resurgence in violence in Ituri. Earlier this month, ADF killed dozens of people in the province in what a UN spokesperson described as a “bloodbath”.
The ADF was formed by disparate small groups in Uganda in the late 1990s following alleged discontent with President Yoweri Museveni.
In 2002, following military assaults by Ugandan forces, the group moved its activities to neighbouring DRC and has since been responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians. In 2019, it pledged allegiance to ISIL.
The ADF’s leadership says it is fighting to form a hardliner government in the East African country.
The DRC army has long struggled against the rebel group, and it is now grappling with a complex web of attacks since renewed hostilities with the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.