Rebels kill at least 44 villagers in four days in the province where Congo is fighting its worst Ebola outbreak

At least 44 civilians have been killed in four days of raids on villages in Mambasa territory, in Congo’s Ituri province, by fighters of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the Islamic State-affiliated group that has terrorised the country’s north-east for years.

The attacks ran from Monday 9 November to Thursday 12 November across remote communities near the border with Uganda. Local tallies say about 30 people were killed in villages of the Babila Babombi chiefdom and 14 more in raids on at least six localities in the Bangole grouping on Thursday. Another local count, for Babila Babombi alone, listed 35 dead and 14 missing, with homes and motorbikes burned.

Civil society leaders in Mambasa say the toll is provisional. Some villages cannot be reached because the fighters are believed to still be nearby, and people who fled into the bush have not all been accounted for.

Who are the ADF?

The ADF began as a Ugandan rebel movement and was pushed across the border into Congo, where it has operated for years, mostly by attacking civilians. It pledged allegiance to Islamic State in 2019. Congolese and Ugandan forces have been running joint operations against it, but residents often say soldiers are absent when the attacks come.

A local child-protection coordinator in Mambasa said he could not understand how the group had become more aggressive in the middle of an operation to hunt it down, and urged the army to rethink its approach. The territory’s deputy administrator said the army was working to curb the group. No official toll had been published by the army or the UN peacekeeping mission by Saturday.

Why does Ebola make this worse?

Ituri is the centre of the deadliest Ebola outbreak Congo has recorded, and Congo has had more than a dozen. On Wednesday the health ministry reported 11,042 infections and 5,387 deaths.

Ebola is stopped by finding every contact of every case, isolating the sick and vaccinating those around them. Massacres undo all three: people flee, contacts scatter, and health teams cannot safely reach villages. Speaking about the violence, the head of emergency preparedness at Africa CDC, the African Union’s health agency, said insecurity lets the virus “take a lead”. The attack at Cantine on 5 November killed three health workers among its 66 victims.

Is the violence spreading?

Rights defenders reported armed men in Mambasa on 2 and 5 November, before this week’s raids. The territory is rich in cocoa fields and small mines, which some locals see as the draw. But a civil society official noted that fighters have also pushed recently into neighbouring Haut-Uele province, which grows no cocoa, suggesting the group’s reach is widening for other reasons. Counting this week’s raids and the Cantine attack, at least 110 people have been killed in the region in about a week.

What does it mean beyond Congo?

Ebola does not stay inside borders: an outbreak this large in a province next to Uganda and South Sudan is a regional risk, and the longer it runs, the greater the chance of cases travelling further. International health agencies have been watching the outbreak closely, and every week the violence continues makes it harder to end.