Militants linked to the Islamic State (ISIS), disguised as mourners, massacred more than 60 Christian civilians at a funeral wake in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a new report by Amnesty International has revealed.
The massacre took place on the night of 8 September 2025 in the village of Ntoyo, in North Kivu province. Residents had gathered overnight in line with local mourning traditions. According to the NGO’s investigation, based on more than 70 interviews with survivors, witnesses, and local officials, militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an ISIS-affiliated group, infiltrated the gathering posing as civilians.
According to witnesses, the attackers mingled with mourners for hours before launching a coordinated assault late in the evening. Once the signal was given, the militants began systematically killing civilians with machetes, axes, hammers, and firearms.
‘They told people to gather…then started cutting them,’ one survivor recounted in testimony cited in the report. Another witness described how attackers first blended into the crowd before suddenly striking victims at close range, targeting heads and upper bodies with blunt weapons.
Civilians in eastern DRC have suffered extensive brutality at the hands of ADF fighters who have committed killings, abductions and torture.https://t.co/c7ueLK01G9
— Amnesty International USA (@amnestyusa) May 5, 2026
The assault quickly escalated into a mass killing. Civilians attempting to flee were shot, while others were hacked to death in front of family members. Amnesty International documented that entire groups of mourners were executed after being surrounded, with some victims burned alive when attackers set fire to homes and vehicles in the village.
The death toll from the Ntoyo attack is estimated at more than 60 people, with some sources placing it above 70, while additional coordinated assaults in nearby villages caused further casualties. The ADF later claimed responsibility, reportedly boasting of killing dozens of Christians.
The report, titled I’d Never Seen So Many Bodies, presents the massacre not as an isolated case but as part of a sustained pattern of violence targeting civilians in eastern Congo. According to Amnesty International, ADF fighters have repeatedly carried out attacks on predominantly Christian villages, health centres, and religious gatherings, deliberately targeting civilians. Survivors described scenes of extreme brutality, including the killing of individuals who resisted orders and the forced witnessing of executions.
The report also found that the group, beyond mass killings, has abducted men, women, and children, forcing them into labour, recruitment, or sexual slavery. Women and girls reported being coerced into forced marriages with fighters under threat of death.
‘ADF later claimed responsibility, reportedly boasting of killing dozens of Christians’
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard stated that the abuses constitute ‘a dehumanizing campaign’ and warned that the scale and systematic nature of the violence meet the threshold of crimes against humanity.
The report also highlights the failure of security forces to protect civilians. Witnesses repeatedly said that Congolese army units either arrived too late or failed to respond altogether, leaving communities to fend for themselves during attacks.
Operating in eastern Congo for decades, the ADF originated in Uganda before relocating across the border and aligning itself with the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province. Since then, the group has intensified its campaign of violence.
Amnesty concluded that the international community has largely overlooked the scale of atrocities in the region, urging urgent action to protect civilians and hold perpetrators accountable.The violence against Christians extends beyond Congo’s borders. As Hungarian Conservative reported recently, at least 40 Christians were killed in a Palm Sunday massacre in Nigeria, following a week-long campaign leading up to the Christian holiday.
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