2025 Kasanga Massacre, Democratic Republic of Congo

Overview

At around 4:00 a.m. local time on 12 February 2025, armed fighters from the Allied Democratic Forces entered the village of Mayba in Lubero Territory, North Kivu province, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, ordering residents from their homes and seizing at least 20 civilians. The militants withdrew and returned around 6:00 p.m. the same day, surrounding the village and rounding up approximately 50 additional residents. In total, at least 70 civilians — including women, children, and elderly villagers — were marched to a Protestant CECA 20 church in the nearby village of Kasanga, where they were bound and executed with machetes. Local sources reported that the bodies were discovered inside the church two days later, on 14 February 2025.

Reports on the massacre were confirmed by Aid to the Church in Need and the Vatican-affiliated Agenzia Fides, both citing local Catholic Church sources, while MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, stated that the reports of the killings "remain unverified" despite acknowledging a civil society report of over 70 bodies found in the church. The International Committee of the Red Cross declined to confirm or deny the account. The exact motive remains disputed; one local source cited by Aid to the Church in Need suggested some victims were killed because they were unable to continue a forced march carrying looted goods, while other analyses linked the attack to ADF retaliation against an intensified military campaign against the group.

Attribution

The killings were attributed to ADF-Baluku, the faction of the Allied Democratic Forces led by Musa Baluku that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in 2019 and operates as the Islamic State's Central Africa Province (ISCAP) branch in eastern DRC. The ADF originated in western Uganda in the 1990s before relocating operations into eastern Congo, where it has since become one of the deadliest non-state armed actors in the region; according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the ADF was responsible for the second-highest number of civilian killings by a non-state armed group worldwide in 2025.

Context

The Kasanga massacre occurred against a backdrop of intensifying violence in eastern DRC, where the ADF has continued to operate despite a joint Congolese-Ugandan military campaign, Operation Shujaa, launched in November 2021 to contain the group. Analysts noted that the broader collapse of security in North Kivu—compounded by the M23 rebel offensive that captured large parts of the province in early 2025—created conditions that allowed ADF fighters to escalate attacks on civilian and religious communities largely unchecked.

International Response

The massacre drew condemnation from religious and rights organisations, including Aid to the Church in Need, Open Doors, and the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), which submitted a formal complaint to the UN Human Rights Council on behalf of the Goma-based NGO Africa New Day. The European Parliament introduced a motion condemning the attack on Christian communities in the DRC and calling on the European Commission to review the EU's memorandum of understanding on critical minerals with Rwanda in light of the country's alleged destabilising role in the eastern DRC conflict. Members of the UK Parliament tabled an Early Day Motion condemning the killings as "a heinous act of violence against civilians" and calling for accountability for ADF fighters and stronger civilian protection measures in the region.