At least 31 young people in Eucharistic adoration were killed late Sunday night during an attack on a Catholic church in Komanda, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province. Local officials say the armed group responsible was the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic State affiliate operating in Central Africa.
The attack occurred during an all-night vigil, including children and adolescents engaging in prayer and devotion to the Eucharist. The group had gathered at the church for overnight Adoration when the gunmen entered, reportedly armed with rifles and machetes.
Witnesses and local authorities described a chaotic and devastating scene. Shops and homes near the church were also looted and set on fire. Some victims were shot, others burned.
“More than 21 people were shot dead inside and outside [the church] and we have recorded at least three charred bodies,” Dieudonné Duranthabo, a local civil society coordinator, told the Associated Press. “But the search is continuing.”
Father Aime Lokana Dhego, a priest in Komanda, told Agence France-Presse that the number of dead includes “at least 31 members of the Eucharistic Crusade movement, with six seriously injured.”
He also reported that some young people were kidnapped during the attack, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
Martyrs in prayer
Reporting by Where Peter Is, in a brief post by Paul Chu and V. J. Tarantino, was among the first to highlight the significance of the victims’ participation in Eucharistic prayer.
“At least 20 young persons, perhaps more, died there before Christ in the Blessed Sacrament,” they wrote.
The United Nations-backed Radio Okapi put the total number of deaths at 43. The Congolese army, however, has only confirmed 10 fatalities as of Monday afternoon. The variation in figures reflects the confusion and difficulty of verifying information in areas where armed groups frequently operate and where infrastructure is limited.
The ADF has been active in the region for over two decades. Originally formed in Uganda in the 1990s, the group has shifted its base of operations to the eastern DRC and is now affiliated with the Islamic State’s Central African Province.
In February of this year, 70 civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, were found murdered inside a Protestant church near Lubero, in North Kivu. The massacre, attributed to the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), was verified by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), and the Fides news agency. (See below for more information).
According to BBC Monitoring, nearly 90% of all Islamic State operations globally are now carried out by its African branches.
Komanda, like many towns in the region, lies in a mineral-rich zone that has long been contested by armed groups. Despite ongoing efforts by both Congolese and Ugandan forces to root out the ADF, attacks on civilians have continued with little warning or pattern.
