Islamic State-linked terrorists have killed more than 1,100 Christians in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since December 2024. Photo courtesy of the Islamic State propaganda department.
While Christians are being slaughtered and kidnapped on a daily basis in Nigeria, Christians are also being massacred in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Like in Nigeria, the perpetrators are not Mennonites. They are Islamic extremists.
Islamist terrorists killed 57 Christians over a week-long period ending June 2, 2026, in the Beni region of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) slaughtered 16 Christians in the village of Mayangose on May 31. A day earlier, 10 believers from the same village were captured and executed.
In a separate attack on May 30, fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the Ugandan-origin Islamist group that operates in eastern Congo as the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province, killed at least seven Christians in Beni’s Ngadi neighborhood. The victims were members of the Pygmy Twa ethnic community. Their escape routes were blocked before they were shot.
ISCAP has claimed the killing of at least 1,100 Christians in northeastern DRC since its campaign escalated in December 2024, and more than 6,500 since first pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in 2017.
The pace of attacks in 2026 has been relentless. On January 2, ADF rebels killed at least 16 people in overnight raids on villages in Lubero Territory. By February 2, the deadliest day of the surge, 28 Christians were killed in attacks on three villages near Ndalya in Ituri. Just days earlier, on January 29, nine Christians were killed, and around 30 houses were burned in Lubero District.
Also in February, ADF fighters executed approximately 70 civilians in a Christian village in North Kivu. Men, women, children, and the elderly were reportedly beheaded.
On March 13, Islamic State media claimed responsibility for killing 17 Christians and abducting around 100 others during an attack on the Christian village of Mushasha in Ituri Province. Dozens of homes were burned. Mushasha is also the site of a Chinese-owned gold mine and a Congolese military base, both of which were targeted in the attack.
On April 1, Maundy Thursday of Holy Week, up to 60 Christians were massacred in the village of Bafwakoa in Mambasa Territory, Ituri, after residents rejected what ISCAP described as a “generous offer,” a demand to convert to Islam or accept dhimmi status. Some victims were burned alive in their homes, while others were beheaded with machetes. Thousands were displaced.
The Congolese army confirmed 43 deaths, while ISCAP claimed 60 in a Telegram post. The Mambasa territorial administrator told Reuters that search operations were continuing and that the death toll could rise. ISCAP’s figures remain unverified, as the group is known to exaggerate casualty counts. Independent researchers at the Bridgeway Foundation recorded at least 967 civilian killings by ISCAP in 2025 alone, using data independent of both Congolese military and Islamic State reporting.
On May 5, an estimated 60 Christians were killed by ISCAP in Beni Territory on the border of North Kivu and Ituri, the deadliest single attack of the recent surge.
The group presents every Christian community it enters with the same three-part ultimatum: convert to Islam, accept dhimmi status, a form of legally enforced subjugation under Islamic law in which Christians are permitted to remain alive but must pay a poll tax called the jizya, submit to Muslim authority, and surrender their women and girls to sexual slavery, or die.
The ultimatum has roots in classical Islamic jurisprudence. Historically, non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, primarily Jews and Christians known as the “People of the Book,” could be granted protected status known as dhimmi. In exchange, they were required to pay a poll tax called the jizya, accept legal subordination to Muslim authority, and observe restrictions on religious practice.
Most mainstream Islamic scholars and virtually all modern Muslim-majority states have long abandoned dhimmitude as a legal institution. ISCAP, however, applies it as a governing tool in territories it raids or controls.
Those who refuse both conversion and subjugation are designated “Christian combatants,” the term Islamic State propaganda uses for Christians who resist. The designation allows the group to portray the killing of civilians as legitimate military action.
In its May 2026 report “I’d Never Seen So Many Bodies,” Amnesty International documented killings, abductions, forced labor, child recruitment, and sexual violence, concluding the violations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The European Parliament has declared ISCAP the deadliest armed group in the DRC.
The scale of the targeting becomes clearer when viewed against the country’s demographics. The U.S. State Department reported in 2023 that more than 95% of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s population is Christian, approximately half Catholic and half Protestant, while Muslims account for roughly 1.5%.
With a population of about 124 million, the DRC is home to more than 117 million Christians. Yet the Open Doors World Watch List ranked the country 35th globally for Christian persecution in 2025. The organization recorded 355 Christians killed for their faith in 2024, up from 261 in 2023. It also reported 10,000 internally displaced Christians, ten times the figure recorded the previous year.
ISCAP is not the only threat facing Christian communities. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel movement killed an estimated 900 to 2,000 people during its capture of Goma in 2025. In February 2026, CODECO, an ethnically motivated Lendu militia operating in Ituri, killed at least 51 civilians. Three Christian humanitarian workers from Swiss Church Aid were also killed in North Kivu that month by unidentified attackers.
ISCAP has publicly denounced M23 as “infidels,” indicating that the two groups are not coordinating despite operating in some of the same areas.
According to UNHCR, more than 7.3 million people are internally displaced in eastern DRC, the highest total in Africa and among the highest in the world. In May 2026, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard stated, “These abuses constitute war crimes which the world must not continue to ignore. As part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity.”
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