Congolese refugee children fetch water from a borehole at Mantapala Refugee Settlement in northern Zambia March 14, 2021. Church aid agencies are helping refugees at the camp learn how to cope with the trauma that forced them to flee their homeland. (CNS photo/Tonny Onyulo) In July it was a church, now a mourning society: Islamist terrorists in eastern Congo are not picky when it comes to killing.
The fighters surprised the inhabitants of the village late on Monday evening, reported the pastor of the Manguredjipa community, Paluku Nzalamingi, from the scene. The Islamists had deliberately attacked a place of mourning where many people had been in the room of a deceased person. Bodies were lying in the house, on the street and on several plots of land near the centre of Ntoyo. Cars, houses and motorbikes had been set on fire. According to reports, a Congolese army base and units of the Ugandan armed forces are located in the attacked village.
Waves of refugees
The densely populated Democratic Republic of Congo is the second largest country in Africa after Algeria and almost seven times the size of Germany. Various rebel groups have been fighting for dominance for decades, particularly in the resource-rich east of the Congo. Conflicts in the neighbouring states also contribute to a politically unstable situation. Added to this is a mostly weak central government in Kinshasa.