By Justin Kabumba, GOMA Congo
A suspected extremist attack
at a church in eastern Congo killed at least 10 people and wounded more than
three dozen, according to the country’s army.
A group linked to Islamic
extremists was suspected of being responsible for a bomb that went off in the
Pentecostal church in the North Kivu province town of Kasindi, military
spokesperson Anthony Mwalushayi told The Associated Press by phone.
A Kenyan national found at the
scene was detained, Mwalushayi said. Congo’s government urged people to avoid
crowds and be vigilant as it conducted an investigation, the minister of
communication tweeted.
Videos and photos of the
attack seen by the AP showed dead bodies lying on the ground outside the
church, including what appeared to be a dead child. The injured were being
carried out of the church surrounded by other people screaming.
Survivors and witnesses said
the blast severed some people’s limbs from their bodies.
Masika Makasi, 25, was sitting
under a tent outside the church when she heard a noise that sounded like a tire
going flat, she told the AP from her home in Kasindi. Her leg was injured in
the attack and her sister-in-law, who was several feet away, died instantly,
Makasi said.
“I am traumatized from seeing
people die around me,” she said.
Violence has wracked eastern
Congo for decades as more than 120 armed groups and self-defense militias fight
for land and power. Nearly 6 million people are internally displaced, and
hundreds of thousands are facing extreme food insecurity, according to the U.N.
Fighters with the Allied
Democratic Forces, a rebel organization which is believed to have links to the
the Islamic State group have carried out several attacks in Kasindi, which is
located on the border with Uganda.
Troops from Uganda’s army have
deployed to eastern Congo to try to stem the violence, but the attacks have
increased and spread. ADF attacks since April have killed at least 370
civilians and involved the abduction of several hundred more, a report by the
United Nations last month said.
The rebel group has extended
its area of operations to Goma and into neighboring Ituri province.
The complex militia problem in
Congo has long produced ethnically motivated attacks and fluid alliances
between multiple militias with dierse interests, said Trupti Agrawal, senior
East Africa analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research department
of the Economist Group, a global media and information-services company.
“The church attack will work
to further the narrative of (the) eastern (Congo) conflict taking a religious
turn,” Agrawal said. “It is likely to deepen anti-Islam sentiment in the
Christian majority country, particularly in the eastern provinces where
Islamist rebels are most active.”
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