The death toll has risen to at least 34 people in a savage attack by Islamic State-backed rebels on a Catholic church in the eastern Congo on Sunday, according to a local leader.
Dieudonne Duranthabo, a civil society coordinator in Komanda, in the Ituri province, told The Associated Press (AP) that the attackers, armed with guns and machetes, stormed the church in Komanda town at around 1 a.m.
The rampage also extended to several houses and shops that were torched.
“The bodies of the victims are still at the scene of the tragedy, and volunteers are preparing how to bury them in a mass grave that we are preparing in a compound of the Catholic church,” Duranthabo told AP.
Video footage from the scene posted on Aljazeera shows burning structures and bodies on the floor of the church.
Reportedly at least five other people were murdered in an earlier attack on the nearby village of Machongani.
The Allied Democratic Force (ADF) is believed to be the perpetrators of both attacks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The ADF is a rebel group that historically has operated along the border between Uganda and Congo. It was formed in Uganda in the late 1990s following alleged discontent with President Yoweri Museveni.
Hellbound and Down 