Gunmen affiliated with the Islamic State group have killed at least 44 civilians in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to reports from Punch and Africanews. The violence, carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces, has targeted villages in the Mambasa territory of Ituri province. This region is currently the epicentre of the country’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak, which has been raging since May 2026. The attacks have severely disrupted humanitarian efforts and heightened security concerns for health workers attempting to contain the viral fever.
The latest raids occurred between Monday and Thursday, just days after the group killed 66 people in neighbouring North Kivu province. That previous assault also destroyed three healthcare facilities and killed three health workers. Gabriel Tonge, a local official, described the brutality of the recent violence to Africanews, stating that victims were "hacked to death with machetes, while others were shot." He noted that some bodies were already in a state of decomposition when discovered. Security sources told AFP that the rebels remain in the bush and have established ambushes, complicating military responses.
The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the region’s chronic instability represents "one of the greatest obstacles to the Ebola response" in the DRC. The virus has spread across swathes of the country’s east and northeast, areas that have been plagued by armed group violence for over three decades. The Allied Democratic Forces, formed from former Ugandan rebels, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019 and is now known as the Islamic State Central Africa Province. The group has a history of extreme brutality towards civilians in both North Kivu and Ituri.
According to the latest health ministry data published on Friday, the Ebola outbreak has caused 5,471 deaths out of 11,197 registered cases, resulting in a mortality rate of nearly 50 percent. This current epidemic is significantly deadlier than the previous outbreak between 2018 and 2020, which saw approximately 2,300 fatalities. The recent violence has added at least 110 more lives to the death toll in the region. Both the Ugandan and Congolese armies have deployed troops to the area to combat the group, but these efforts have so far yielded limited success. The attacks have further endangered the ongoing Ebola response in a region already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis.