Church bombing kills 10 in Congo

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 bodies on the ground outside the church, including one that appeared to be a child’s. 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.

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, 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 racked 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 United Nations.

Fighters with the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel organization that is believed to have links to the Islamic State group, have carried out several attacks in Kasindi, on the border with Uganda.

The complex militia problem in Congo has long produced ethnically motivated attacks and fluid alliances between multiple militias with diverse 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.