At least 44 civilians were killed this week in attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the Mambasa territory of Ituri province in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, humanitarian and security sources told AFP on Friday, November 13 — more than double the toll first reported from the same wave of raids.
Source: AFP via NewsCentral TV, Nov 13, 2026
A security source told AFP that at least 44 people had been killed in the Mambasa attacks, while a humanitarian source reported 47 bodies found. Several local sources confirmed the attacks and gave death tolls of up to 49, adding that the search for bodies is ongoing, AFP reported.
Source: AFP via GistsMate, Nov 13, 2026
"Some bodies are already in a state of decomposition. The victims were hacked to death with machetes, while others were shot," Gabriel Tonge, a local official, told AFP. A humanitarian source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "The ADF rebels are still in the bush and have set up ambushes."
Source: AFP via GistsMate, Nov 13, 2026
This is a follow-up to the earlier report from Mambasa, in which civil society monitors first counted at least 22 people killed and at least 10 abducted across eight locations. The toll has since risen sharply as search teams reach remote villages attacked between Monday and Thursday. Read the earlier report
A toll that kept rising through the week
The attacks were first reported on Wednesday, when two civil society and human rights monitoring groups said ADF fighters had struck eight locations in Mambasa territory, near the Uganda border, killing at least 22 people and abducting at least 10 others, the Associated Press reported. Marie-Noelle Anatobe, coordinator of the Civil Society of Congo in Mambasa territory, said then that the toll was provisional and that homes and motorcycles had been set on fire.
Source: AP, Nov 12, 2026
By midday on Friday, local officials and activists were already putting the toll at at least 35 dead with about 15 people missing, and warned it could rise as the search moved forward, Europa Press reported. They said the attackers had set fire to numerous houses and vehicles before withdrawing, and that the ADF had also carried out new assaults in the last hours against two more localities and a camp in the same area, according to Radio Okapi, the Congolese broadcaster — though those remote, virtually cut-off areas had produced no confirmed casualty figures.
Source: Europa Press via Democrata, Nov 13, 2026
Attacks inside an Ebola epicentre
Mambasa lies in Ituri province, the epicentre of Congo's latest Ebola outbreak, which was first detected six months ago and was declared in May. It is the country's 17th Ebola outbreak and its worst: 5,471 people have died out of 11,197 registered cases, according to the latest health ministry data published on Friday — a mortality rate of close to 50 percent, AFP reported. The previous worst epidemic, in 2018-2020, saw some 2,300 deaths from 3,500 cases. Cases and deaths have been rising rapidly in recent weeks in the neighbouring Beni territory of North Kivu province.
Source: AFP via GistsMate, Nov 13, 2026
The Mambasa raids come just days after the ADF killed at least 66 people, including three health workers fighting the Ebola epidemic, and burnt three healthcare facilities in an attack at Cantine-Aloya in neighbouring North Kivu, roughly 100 kilometres from this week's targets, AFP reported. That attack prompted World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to warn that the region's chronic instability represents "one of the greatest obstacles to the Ebola response in the DRC." Militias, including the ADF, have repeatedly attacked health workers during the outbreak.
Source: AFP via GistsMate, Nov 13, 2026
Who the ADF are
The ADF was formed from former Ugandan rebels and is infamous for extreme brutality towards civilians, regularly carrying out massacres in both North Kivu and Ituri, AFP reported. In 2019 the group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, which presents it as its so-called Islamic State Central Africa Province. Both the Ugandan and Congolese armies have sent troops to the region to tackle the ADF, so far without significant success.
Source: AFP via GistsMate, Nov 13, 2026
Search teams are still looking for bodies in remote villages around Mambasa, and every toll reported so far — 22, then 35, now 44 to 49 — has been described by the sources giving it as provisional. With ADF fighters reported still in the bush and setting ambushes, residents and Ebola response teams remain at risk, and the count is expected to be revised again as the cut-off areas are reached.
The first report from Mambasa counted 22 dead and 10 abducted across eight locations. Read the earlier report