At least 20 civilians have died in a fresh surge of ADF attacks in eastern DRC, after fighters linked to the Islamic State-affiliated militia struck a string of villages and commercial centres in North Kivu’s Beni territory between 13 and 16 July.
The bulk of the killings unfolded in and around Mangina, a town roughly 30 kilometres from Beni city. Four civilians were killed and six wounded on the evening of 14 July when gunmen entered the Kalunga quarter, according to Mangina’s mayor, Kambale Kikuku Nicolas. Two houses and a motorcycle were burned, and two residents remain unaccounted for.
The following night, a second assault on Mangina’s Makukulu quarter left more than ten dead, local civil society leader Kakule Vunyatsi Muongozi said, describing a targeted strike on the Ntobili block. He accused the authorities of failing to respond despite advance warning of ADF movements in the area.
A third incursion followed within 48 hours. The Congolese army, FARDC, confirmed that ADF fighters fleeing a military operation in the Mayangose forest crossed the RN4 highway near Mbutaba-Mapemba before attacking Mangina overnight on 15 to 16 July, killing eight civilians.
Army spokesman Lieutenant Marc Elongo said the same group tried a further raid on Kalibo village the next morning, on the Mangina-Mununze road, but troops repelled it after a resident raised the alarm. The latest ADF attacks in eastern DRC have heightened fears among residents who say the militants are increasingly targeting both urban and rural communities across Beni territory.
Beni city itself was not spared. Mulekera commune recorded seven deaths, including three FARDC soldiers and a motorcycle-taxi driver, in an ambush in the Sayo and Matembo neighbourhoods on the night of 13 to 14 July. A separate strike the same weekend killed two civilians at Matukaka, near the Mbau-Kamango axis, with bodies taken to Mavivi health centre’s morgue.
Taken together, these ADF attacks in eastern DRC account for a toll of at least 20 civilians killed in less than a week, a figure consistent with what wire agencies have reported and one that local officials caution could still rise as search operations continue in outlying farmland and bush.
The Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan-origin rebel group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province in 2019, has operated in North Kivu and Ituri for close to three decades. Despite joint Congolese-Ugandan military operations under the banner Shujaa, the group has killed more than 300 civilians across the two provinces since the start of 2026, according to figures compiled by Radio Okapi in June.
A separate report published this week by the local rights group Badilika found that more than 200 civilians were killed between April and June alone in Beni, Rutshuru, Masisi and Walikale, with ADF fighters responsible for close to 90 percent of the massacres recorded in Beni territory specifically.
Analysts pointed that the frequency of ADF attacks in eastern DRC has exposed the limits of current military operations despite ongoing cooperation between Congolese and Ugandan forces.
The renewed ADF attacks in eastern DRC come as the group also pushes into new ground. More than 10,000 people have fled Watsa and Wamba territories in neighbouring Haut-Uele province in recent weeks, as ADF fighters pressured out of Mambasa by military operations seek new hideouts in the forest. Security officials from five provinces met in Kisangani on 2 July to draft a regional plan aimed at containing the group’s spread.
Humanitarian groups warn that continued ADF attacks in eastern DRC could trigger further displacement and deepen an already severe security crisis in North Kivu.
For residents of Mangina, the pattern is now grimly familiar. Civil society representatives say they had flagged suspicious ADF movements to security services days before the 14 July attack, warnings that went unheeded. With three separate incursions inside 72 hours, many now question whether the current military deployment is enough to protect a town that has already buried dozens of victims of ADF attacks in eastern DRC this year alone.
