ISIS-linked ADF rebels slaughtered patients, including breastfeeding mothers, in a North Kivu clinic attack, torching the facility and abducting newborns amid global silence on Congo’s mineral-fueled violence.
Newsroom (18/11/2025 Gaudium Press ) Militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist rebel group pledged to the Islamic State, stormed a Catholic-run health clinic in the remote village of Byambwe, North Kivu province, late on November 14, killing at least 20 civilians in a brutal assault that has drawn condemnation from Pope Leo XIV and renewed accusations of international indifference to escalating violence in eastern Congo.
The attack targeted a clinic operated by the Little Sisters of the Presentation, a congregation providing essential maternal and surgical care in an area with few functioning hospitals. According to eyewitness accounts and local sources relayed through Vatican News, the rebels first massacred 15 patients inside the facility, slitting throats and decapitating victims — including women breastfeeding their infants — before looting medical supplies and setting the building ablaze. The fire claimed additional lives in the maternity ward. Five more people were killed in nearby homes as the assailants torched dozens of residences.
Father Giovanni Piumatti, an Italian Fidei Donum missionary who spent over 50 years in the Diocese of Butembo-Beni before returning to Italy, confirmed the details to Vatican News, describing it as a “typical ADF attack.” Speaking from Italy, the veteran priest said the rebels appeared primarily motivated by theft of drugs and equipment, adding that Congolese army units pursued the group but were outmatched by their superior armament. “Panic spread everywhere,” he said. “The army pursued them, but despite its efforts, the terrorists escaped. They seem to be better armed and equipped than the regular forces.”
The ADF, originating in Uganda and active in North Kivu for years, is notorious for indiscriminate raids on villages, roads, and fields. Fighters, many under the influence of drugs, frequently abduct children and youths for recruitment, forcing recruits to participate in killings with machetes. “What is most tragic — beyond the sheer number of innocent victims — is the way they kill,” Father Piumatti told Vatican News. “They slit civilians’ throats, decapitate them — it’s horrific. Here they killed mothers as they were breastfeeding their babies. These massacres are beyond imagination, and they happen almost every week. Many go unreported.”
As of November 16, no nuns were reported among the dead, but several newborns are believed to have been kidnapped. The sisters, displaced from their destroyed clinic, have continued aiding survivors on the streets.
The Byambwe massacre echoes a July 27 ADF assault on a Catholic church in Komanda, Ituri province, where at least 43 worshippers, including children, were killed during a service.
During his Angelus address on November 16, Pope Leo XIV offered prayers for the victims and the Christian community in North Kivu. “My prayers are with the families in Kivu… where in recent days there has been a massacre of civilians, with at least twenty victims of a terrorist attack,” the pontiff said. “Let us pray that all violence may cease and that believers may work together for the common good.”
Father Piumatti sharply criticized what he termed the “shameful silence” of the international community, linking the persistence of such groups to economic interests in the region’s vast mineral wealth, including coltan, gold, and other resources critical to global electronics and trade. “Kivu is rich in mineral deposits — a land full of precious resources that has always been contested,” he said. “That is why these Islamist groups receive backing. The ADF are the most ferocious, but they are not the only ones supplied with weapons and money to keep trade flowing. These conflicts serve commercial interests — and the world’s silence is profoundly troubling.”
The attack comes amid broader instability in eastern DR Congo, where dozens of armed groups vie for control, displacing millions and claiming thousands of lives annually. Despite joint operations with Ugandan forces and recent diplomatic efforts, the ADF has intensified operations in recent years, with human rights monitors documenting hundreds of civilian deaths in 2024-2025 alone.
Local authorities and civil society leaders in Lubero territory reported the rebels fled into surrounding forests after the raid, underscoring the challenges facing under-resourced security forces in one of the world’s most protracted humanitarian crises.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from OSV News
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