At least 40 people, including Christians, have been killed in what Open Doors has described as a “killing spree” within the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Of the victims, 21 were attending a prayer vigil in a Catholic church on the time of the attack at around 1am on Sunday morning.
The attack was carried out in Komanda, Ituri province, in eastern DRC. It has been attributed to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an affiliate of the so-called Islamic State.
In addition to the church, other deaths occurred in nearby houses and businesses that had been torched.
Christians have been speaking out in regards to the situation in DRC amid protracted violence and a February massacre during which 70 people were found dead inside a church, a lot of them having been beheaded.
Illia Djadi, Open Doors’ sub-Saharan Africa expert, said, “The killings are very strategic.
“They are attacking defenceless rural farming communities, where there isn’t any security presence. Most of the time they’re using machetes, beheading people, at nighttime not to draw attention.
“They are massacring village after village, community after community.”
Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reports that children at a summer camp were among the many victims.
Father Marcelo Oliveira, a Comboni missionary in North Kivu eastern province, told ACN that those killed were a part of the Eucharistic Crusade movement and that the prayer vigil had been held as a part of summer holiday activities.
He said: “The attack occurred at around 1am within the morning. The rebels entered the church and murdered a lot of children, each contained in the church constructing and within the compound.
“We proceed to wish for peace on this immense country and to ask for the grace of peace.”
Open Doors partner groups within the DRC have travelled to Komanda to supply aid, medicine and trauma counselling for survivors of Sunday’s attack.
According to Djadi, communities have been left vulnerable to attacks by the ADF because the international community focuses on a peace deal between the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda, with most of the DRC’s security forces deployed in a struggle to regulate the Rwandan-backed paramilitary group M23.
This has left the ADF free to perform killing sprees with impunity, says Djadi.
“There’s no attention on the activity of ADF and the continuing massacres,” he said.
“This power vacuum has allowed them to proceed the slaughter unchecked, and sometimes unreported.”
He warned that the ADF is pushing to show parts of DRC into an Islamic caliphate much like the “horrific” system imposed by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
He is asking for more motion from the DRC government and international community to bring an end to the attacks.
“We must see a transparent willingness and responsibility from the federal government to guard their residents. And the international community also must wake as much as what’s happening,” he said.
“The name could also be different, but that is Islamic State at work. Around six million people have been killed over 30 years in eastern DRC, and eight million internally displaced. We must use all of the means used to defeat IS in Syria and Iraq to defeat them again in Eastern DRC.”
 At least 40 people, including Christians, have been killed in what...){kind=link}