More than 70 people were killed on Monday night, September 8, during a funeral in the town of Ntoyo, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Some local sources put the number of victims at more than a hundred.
The attack was perpetrated by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a jihadist militia linked to the Islamic State in Central Africa. According to a Catholic priest from the Manguredjipa parish told the portal ActualitéWhat I have seen is horrible. They killed almost all the participants in a funeral". The head of the Babika group, Eugène Viringa, warned that the death toll could rise in the coming hours.
ADF terrorism
The ADF emerged in Uganda in the 1990s, but since 2019 they have operated under the banner of Islamic State, following their leader's oath of allegiance. Since then, they have intensified massacres against defenseless villages in eastern DRC, where thousands of civilians have lost their lives.
Christian funerals and temples have become regular targets of these attacks, with the aim of intimidating and displacing Catholic and Protestant communities. In regions such as North Kivu and Ituri, the civilian population lives in permanent insecurity. Last month July an attack that left 35 people dead, and in August more than 50 people were killed in another attack.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country with a Christian majority, more than 50 % are Catholics and another 40 % are Protestants. The massacre in Ntoyo, according to local observers, is part of a systematic strategy of violence aimed at weakening the presence of Christian communities in Central Africa.
