{"id":296774,"date":"2025-07-27T20:46:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T20:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296774\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T20:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T20:46:13","slug":"democratic-republic-of-congo-at-least-34-people-killed-after-islamic-state-backed-rebels-attack-catholic-church-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/296774\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Republic of Congo: At least 34 people killed after Islamic State-backed rebels attack Catholic church | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Islamic State-backed rebels killed at least 34 people in an attack at a Catholic church in eastern Congo on Sunday, according to officials.<\/p>\n

A civil society leader in Komanda, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo<\/strong><\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

Other city officials told the Reuters news agency that 38 people were killed, 15 injured, and several others were still missing.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

The ADF was formed by disparate small groups in Uganda<\/a> <\/strong>in the late 1990s following alleged discontent with former president Yoweri Museveni.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Image:
\n The ADF has been responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians. File pic: Reuters<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

According to a 2019 report on terrorism from the US Department of State, the ADF established ties with Islamic State<\/a> <\/strong>in late 2018<\/p>\n

It comes after at least five other people were killed in an attack on the nearby village of Machongani, where a search is ongoing.<\/p>\n

“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”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islamic State-backed rebels killed at least 34 people in an attack at a Catholic church in eastern Congo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-296774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114927159754430757","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}