Reports from North Kivu and Ituri describe a relentless campaign by ISCAP and ADF fighters, with more than 1,100 Christians reportedly killed since December 2024.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Islamic State-linked fighters have killed dozens of Christians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in recent days, adding to a wider campaign of violence that monitors say has claimed more than 1,100 Christian lives since December 2024.
The latest attacks were reported in the Beni region of North Kivu, where Islamist militants killed 57 Christians over a week-long period ending June 2, 2026.
The Islamic State Central Africa Province, known as ISCAP, killed 16 Christians in the village of Mayangose on May 31. One day earlier, 10 Christians from the same village were captured and executed, according to the report.
Another attack on May 30 targeted Beni’s Ngadi neighborhood, where fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces killed at least seven Christians. The victims were members of the Pygmy Twa ethnic community. Their escape routes were reportedly blocked before they were shot.
The ADF, an Islamist group that originated in Uganda, operates in eastern Congo as the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province. ISCAP has claimed responsibility for killing at least 1,100 Christians in northeastern Congo since its campaign intensified in December 2024. The group has claimed more than 6,500 killings since pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in 2017.
Violence against Christian villages has continued throughout 2026. On Jan. 2, ADF fighters killed at least 16 people in overnight raids in Lubero Territory. On Jan. 29, nine Christians were killed and about 30 homes were burned in Lubero District. On Feb. 2, 28 Christians were killed in attacks on three villages near Ndalya in Ituri, the deadliest day of that surge.
In another February attack, ADF fighters executed about 70 civilians in a Christian village in North Kivu. Men, women, children and elderly residents were reportedly beheaded.
The violence continued into March, when Islamic State media claimed responsibility for killing 17 Christians and abducting about 100 others during an attack on the Christian village of Mushasha in Ituri Province. Dozens of homes were burned. The village is also home to a Chinese-owned gold mine and a Congolese military base, both of which were targeted.
On April 1, Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, up to 60 Christians were killed in Bafwakoa, a village in Mambasa Territory in Ituri. Residents were reportedly attacked after rejecting what ISCAP described as a “generous offer” to convert to Islam or accept dhimmi status. Some victims were burned alive in their homes, while others were beheaded with machetes. Thousands of people were displaced.
The Congolese army confirmed 43 deaths in the Bafwakoa attack, while ISCAP claimed 60 in a Telegram post. The Mambasa territorial administrator told Reuters that search operations were continuing and that the death toll could rise. ISCAP’s casualty claims remain unverified, and the group has been known to exaggerate figures.
Independent researchers at the Bridgeway Foundation recorded at least 967 civilian killings by ISCAP in 2025 alone, using data independent of both Congolese military reports and Islamic State propaganda.
On May 5, an estimated 60 Christians were killed by ISCAP in Beni Territory along the border between North Kivu and Ituri, marking the deadliest single attack of the recent wave.
Reports say ISCAP has imposed a repeated ultimatum on Christian communities it enters: convert to Islam, accept dhimmi status or die. Dhimmi status refers to a historical system under Islamic law in which some non-Muslim communities, primarily Jews and Christians, were permitted to live under Muslim rule while paying a poll tax known as jizya and accepting legal subordination.
Most mainstream Islamic scholars and modern Muslim-majority states no longer apply dhimmitude as a legal system. ISCAP, however, has used the concept as a governing tool in areas it attacks or controls. Christians who refuse conversion or subjugation are labeled “Christian combatants” in Islamic State propaganda, allowing the group to portray civilian killings as military action.
Amnesty International documented killings, abductions, forced labor, child recruitment and sexual violence by the group in its May 2026 report, “I’d Never Seen So Many Bodies,” concluding that the violations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The European Parliament has described ISCAP as the deadliest armed group in the DRC.
The attacks are taking place in a country where Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the population. The U.S. State Department reported in 2023 that more than 95% of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s population is Christian, roughly divided between Catholics and Protestants, while Muslims account for about 1.5%.
With a population of about 124 million, the DRC is home to more than 117 million Christians. Open Doors ranked the country 35th globally for Christian persecution in 2025. The organization recorded 355 Christians killed for their faith in 2024, up from 261 in 2023, and reported 10,000 internally displaced Christians, ten times the previous year’s total.
ISCAP is not the only armed group threatening Christian communities and civilians in eastern Congo. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel movement killed an estimated 900 to 2,000 people during its capture of Goma in 2025. In February 2026, CODECO, an ethnically motivated Lendu militia operating in Ituri, killed at least 51 civilians. That same month, three Christian humanitarian workers from Swiss Church Aid were killed in North Kivu by unidentified attackers.
ISCAP has publicly denounced M23 as “infidels,” suggesting the two groups are not coordinating despite operating in overlapping areas.
The violence has deepened one of the world’s largest displacement crises. According to UNHCR, more than 7.3 million people are internally displaced in eastern DRC, the highest total in Africa and among the highest in the world.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in May 2026 that the abuses demand global attention.
“These abuses constitute war crimes which the world must not continue to ignore. As part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity,” Callamard said.
The continued attacks have left Christian communities in North Kivu and Ituri facing repeated raids, executions, abductions and displacement, with no clear end to the violence in sight.
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