At least 36 people have been killed since Tuesday, 5 May, in a series of attacks carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to local and security sources. The violence struck remote communities straddling the border between North Kivu and Ituri provinces, two territories that have long been among the most dangerous in the country.

In the overnight attack from Tuesday to Wednesday, fighters targeted four villages — Manzungu, Musamba, Wasafi and Mangambo — near the chieftaincy of Beni-Mbau in North Kivu, killing at least 24 civilians, the majority of them farmers. A local administrative official, speaking anonymously, confirmed the toll and noted that several people remain missing. Then on Thursday, at least 15 more people were killed when ADF fighters descended on Biakato, a town in the Mambasa territory of Ituri province, roughly 70 kilometres from Tuesday's attack sites. According to a local civil society representative, the fighters "surprised inhabitants in their homes" around midday, killing with both firearms and machetes. Fifteen bodies were recovered, including those of three women, eleven men, and a child.

The ADF is an armed group with Ugandan origins that has operated in eastern DRC for decades. It pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019 and is now designated as ISIS-Central Africa. Both attack zones lie in dense forest areas where the group has carried out years of atrocities, often intensifying operations in response to military pressure. Uganda deployed its army to northern North Kivu and Ituri in 2021 as part of a joint operation with the Congolese army known as "Shujaa," but the partnership has not ended the bloodshed. The latest attacks follow a massacre in early April in which 43 people were killed in Bafwakoa, in western Ituri, raising fears that the ADF is expanding its reach toward the neighbouring province of Tshopo.

A newly published Amnesty International report, titled "I'd Never Seen So Many Bodies," documents a pattern of war crimes by the ADF, including murder, abductions, forced labour, forced marriage, sexual violence against women and girls, and the recruitment of children. The organisation documented 46 cases of abduction and found that the ADF has increasingly turned to kidnapping for ransom while also acquiring advanced technology to evade military forces. "Civilians in the eastern DRC have suffered extensive brutality at the hands of ADF fighters," said Amnesty's secretary general, Agnès Callamard, who called the abuses war crimes that "the world must not continue to ignore."

The humanitarian toll is compounding an already desperate situation. More than 100,000 people fled their homes in Ituri alone between February and the end of April 2026 due to persistent insecurity, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Amnesty has urged the Congolese government to strengthen civilian protection, improve early warning systems, and work with local communities and the United Nations. Witnesses have reported that security forces sometimes arrive late to attack sites, or not at all — a pattern that the rights group says must urgently change.