At least 60 people were killed in an overnight attack by the Allied Democratic Force in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local officials and survivors said, after civilians gathered for a burial in the village of Ntoyo in North Kivu.
"The ADF attack caused around 60 deaths, but the final toll will be given later this evening because the territory has just deployed services to the area to count the number of beheaded people," Col. Alain Kiwewa, the administrator of Lubero territory where Ntoyo is located, told The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025.
A survivor who asked not to be named said the assailants used machetes and ordered people to assemble before attacking. "There were about 10 of them. I saw machetes. They told people to gather in one place and started cutting them. I listened to people screaming and I fainted," she said.
The attack took place overnight as mourners gathered for a funeral, according to local sources. Emergency services and territorial authorities had only just reached the area to begin documenting the victims and the scale of the assault, officials said, and authorities cautioned that the casualty figure was provisional.
The Allied Democratic Force, or ADF, operates in the borderlands between eastern Congo and Uganda and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019. The group has escalated deadly operations across the region in recent months. In July, ADF gunmen carried out large-scale attacks in Ituri province that killed at least 34 people in a church assault in Komanda and 66 people in a separate attack in Irumu.
Congo and Uganda have carried out joint operations intended to degrade the group's capabilities, but ADF attacks on civilians have continued, compounding insecurity in an area where multiple armed conflicts overlap. Eastern Congo has long been afflicted by a complex mix of violence involving local militias, foreign armed groups and, most recently, an intensifying confrontation between the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel movement and Congo's central government.
Humanitarian and administrative sources said the continued violence has worsened the plight of civilians, who face displacement, loss of livelihoods and limited access to medical and burial services. Authorities had not released a full list of victims nor reported arrests in the immediate aftermath of the Ntoyo attack.
International and regional efforts to curb the violence in eastern Congo have so far failed to restore lasting security for many communities. Officials in Lubero and North Kivu said they would provide a more detailed toll and further information after teams completed on-the-ground counting and investigations into the circumstances of the attack.