At least 70 bodies have been found tied up and beheaded in a church in an abandoned village in the eastern part of war torn DR Congo with most of them having been held hostage for several days
At least 70 bodies have been found beheaded in a church with most having been held hostage and were found tied up.
The horrific discovery was made in an abandoned village in the DR Congo, this Friday. The victims, believed to be hostages of the ADF rebels, were found in a Protestant church in Kasanga, where people had left after repeated attacks.
Due to fighting involving the ADF, people had been forced to leave and had moved to nearby villages in the war torn country. “70 bodies were discovered in the church. They were tied up near the locality of Mayba,” said Vianney Vitswamba, coordinator of the local community protection committee.
The ADF – Allied Defence Forces – are affiliated to ISIS and they are seen as the most deadly armed group in the region. The M23 – March 23 Movement – has previously been seen as the greater threat and so has faced most international attention. Several Western countries including the United States and France have linked M23 with Rwanda but it’s government has denied that it has connections with the group.
The dead are understood to be among the dozens of people who have been reported missing since last Wednesday in the village which is in the east of the Congo. Horrific details from local media have revealed that they were decapitated using machetes.
It comes as Rwanda-backed rebels in eastern Congo entered the region’s second-largest city of Bukavu on Friday, local and civil society leaders said, the latest ground gained since a major escalation of their yearslong fighting with government forces.
The M23 rebels entered the city’s Kazingu and Bagira zone and were advancing towards the centre of the city of about 1.3 million people, according to Jean Samy, vice-president of the civil society in South Kivu. He reported gunfire in parts of the city.
Videos posted online appeared to show rebels marching toward the Bagira area. In one of the videos, a voice in the background shouted: “They are there … there are many of them.”
Hours earlier, the rebels had claimed to have seized a second airport in the region, in the town of Kavumu, following a days-long advance, while the U.N. warned that the recent escalation of fighting with government forces has left 350,000 internally displaced people without shelter.
The M23, which is supported by about 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, took control of eastern Congo’s biggest city, Goma, in late January. The rebels are the most prominent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control of Congo’s mineral-rich east.
The rebellion has killed at least 2,000 people in and around Goma and left hundreds of thousands of displaced people stranded, the U.N. and Congolese authorities have said.
It is not clear who is now in control of the Kavumu national airport, located about 30 kilometres from Bukavu, which is the capital of South Kivu province. Government officials and civil society leaders did not immediately comment.
Kavumu airport became a target after the M23 rebels seized Goma an its international airport. Goma is a critical trade and humanitarian hub that hosted many of the close to 6.5 million people displaced in the conflict, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka said on X that the rebels took over Kavumu airport and its surroundings to “eliminate the threat at the source.”
“The airport posed a danger to the civilian population,” he said. Congo’s Communication Ministry issued a statement criticizing the rebels for violating a ceasefire that regional leaders have called for. The rebels were “imposing an urban war by attacking the positions of the FARDC (Congolese military) who are keen to avoid bloodshed in Bukavu,” the ministry said.
