More Christians are being targeted and slaughtered by an Islamist terror group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a predominantly Christian nation in Africa.
This May alone, about 50 Christians have been mercilessly killed by Islamist jihadists, CBN News reports.
In one incident, the militants stormed the eastern region of the Congo on the night of May 4, slaughtering some 34 people, including eight women and four children, according to Agence France-Press (AFP).
"Between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., the enemy managed to get past army positions and kill peaceful residents in their homes, slashing their throats," local administrator Bernard Amisi Kalonda told AFP.
Two days later the militants attacked again, killing 13 people, including two members of the Church on the Rock mission.
The terrorists belong to the Muslim Defence International, which has been operating in the Congo for more than 20 years. In 2014, the group began an intensified campaign to kill more Christians. Since then, the terrorists have killed more than 500 people in the eastern part of the country, United Nations sources say.
The unrelenting violence in this region of the Congo, which is more than 95 percent Christian, has forced many people to flee their homes.
The ever increasing level of danger has forced the Church on the Rock to shut down its missions and schools.
"We are heartbroken, questioning our faith, half-terrified, but determined and carrying on," Church on the Rock's founder Mike Anticoli told World Watch Monitor.
"We may be targeted due to the fact that we train local leaders and aspiring missionaries from several churches and denominations," he said.
On Saturday, a confidential report to the United Nations Security Council revealed that a Congolese army general recruited, financed and armed elements of a Ugandan Islamist group to kill civilians while he was in charge of a military operation targeting the rebels, Reuters reports.
A panel of U.N. experts, who monitor sanctions on Democratic Republic of Congo, said "it has become clear that FARDC (Congolese army) officers were involved in recruiting and supplying armed groups involved in the killings (of civilians)."
More than 500 people have died in a wave of attacks in eastern Congo since October 2014, rights groups say. The Congolese government has blamed most of those on the Allied Democratic Forces.
