Christians Killed in Democratic Republic of Congo and Across Africa in Recent Days

Christians have been killed in multiple attacks across Africa in the past several days, with fresh violence reported in Nigeria, Cameroon, Mozambique, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Nigeria’s Plateau State, suspected Fulani militants have struck repeatedly in the past two weeks. On August 5, gunmen killed three Christian brothers in a nighttime ambush at Tarrai Jol Hamlet in Riyom Local Government Area.

On August 16, roughly 100 gunmen attacked Jwak Maitumbi in Mangu Local Government Area as residents prepared for church, killing at least 30 people and burning more than 50 homes, shops, health centers, and churches. Two days later, at least 24 Christians were killed in an overnight attack on the Bin Mper community, also in Mangu County, the home county of Governor Caleb Mutfwang.

Weeks earlier, in Kaduna State, suspected Fulani militants stormed Naridon village in Kauru Local Government Area just before midnight on July 26, killing 30 people, including 11 children.

In Cameroon, on August 10, Boko Haram militants targeted the village of Mahoula in Mayo-Sava Division, kidnapping two Christians from two different churches. The area sits near the Nigerian border and has been repeatedly hit by Boko Haram and its splinter groups.

An ISIS infographic released on August 7 tallied more than 100 casualties across Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria over a five-week span.

ISIS-linked insurgents in Mozambique killed 35 Christians in a string of attacks, including the beheading of five people on July 22 whom the group’s Al-Naba propaganda outlet described as “captured Christian infidels,” and the killing of 15 more on August 1 as they tried to flee the village of Marera.

In Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, extremists shot and killed Pastor Abdel Ibris Jongool, an Episcopal church leader, on July 24. He died of his wounds days later. Six civilians were killed in the same region the day before. The attacks were attributed to a breakaway faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, not to ISIS.

Gunmen shot and killed Father Crépin Martial Monga in the Central African Republic on July 22, one day after he baptized 175 people, 160 of them recently displaced Christians. His killer has not been identified.

The most intense and sustained campaign, however, has unfolded in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province, known as ISCAP, has killed more than 1,270 Christians in the country’s northeast since December 2024.

ISCAP traces its roots to the Allied Democratic Forces, a group formed in 1995 through an alliance between members of Uganda’s Tabliq Islamic sect and the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda, both opposed to the government of President Yoweri Museveni. After a failed insurgency in western Uganda, the group retreated into eastern Congo, where it has remained based ever since.

Facing military pressure and internal decline, the group’s leadership began pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in 2017, a partnership formally recognized in 2019 when the Islamic State announced the group under the ISCAP banner. The alliance brought foreign financing and new recruitment pipelines from across East Africa.

ISCAP has been responsible for more than 4,000 deaths in eastern Congo since the 2017 alliance began, and joint Ugandan-Congolese military operations against the group, including the multi-year Operation Shujaa, have failed to stop the killing.

The violence has been near-constant through July and August. Between July 12 and 16, ADF fighters attacked the town of Beni and the commune of Mangina three times, killing more than 20 people, including a church elder and a worship leader. On July 24, 31 Christians were killed in three simultaneous attacks on the villages of Mangambo, Katerrain, and Kotaokola in North Kivu.

In the deadliest single incident of the period, ISCAP fighters killed 17 Christians and captured two others in a July 31 raid on the village of Monguiko. Five days later, on August 5, the group attacked the villages of Bakwa and Kapotimo, killing 13 people, capturing eight, and burning roughly 40 homes. The next day, on August 6, militants ambushed a riverboat near the town of Biondo, killing five Christians with machine guns and sinking the vessel.

The most recent attack came on August 10, when ADF fighters struck the villages of Mukoni and Bayeti, killing more than 18 people and leaving 14 others missing.

The violence in Africa is unfolding against a backdrop of renewed ISIS activity worldwide. The group’s core has been degraded, but its ability to inspire attacks far from its remaining strongholds has not disappeared. On July 25, a Berlin man who had pledged allegiance to ISIS in a video recorded that day drove a van into a crowd at the city’s Christopher Street Day Pride event, killing one woman and injuring 29 others. He was shot and killed by police the following day. He had previously traveled to Lebanon in an attempt to reach Syria and join ISIS.

The Berlin attack follows a string of ISIS-linked plots and attacks across the West over the past year. In New Orleans, an ISIS-inspired truck attack on Bourbon Street killed 15 people on New Year’s Day 2025. In March 2026, a previously convicted ISIS supporter opened fire at Old Dominion University. Two men described by federal authorities as ISIS-inspired were also charged after throwing homemade explosives at a crowd outside Gracie Mansion in New York City. Around the same time, a man rammed a vehicle into a Michigan synagogue and opened fire before being stopped by security.

The U.S.-led coalition and its local partners territorially defeated ISIS in Iraq and Syria by March 2019. However, the organization still exists and is able to reach across Africa and into Europe and the United States, with a network still capable of carrying out, directing, enabling, or simply inspiring violence on multiple continents.