At least 60 people have been killed while attending a funeral in the conflict-ridden eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in an ISIL (ISIS)-affiliated group attack carried out by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), officials said.

“The ADF attack caused around 60 deaths, but the final toll will be given later this evening because the territory has just deployed services to the area to count the number of beheaded people,” Col Alain Kiwewa, local administrator of the Lubero territory in Ntoyo, North Kivu, where the attack took place, told The Associated Press news agency on Tuesday.

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Macaire Sivikunula, another local administrator, said the victims were “caught off guard at a mourning ceremony” Monday night, and that the majority of them were “killed with machetes” while others were shot.

The mineral-rich Kivu region has been a flashpoint for months as the DRC and allied groups have been battling the Rwanda-backed M23 group, and has dozens of armed groups operating there. ADF has taken advantage of the volatile security situation to expand its operations.

ADF has carried out a series of deadly attacks this year. At the end of July, it attacked a Catholic church, killing more than 40 people and kidnapping between 12 and 14.

In another attack in August, the rebel group killed 52 people, carrying out “kidnappings, looting, the burning of houses, vehicles, and motorcycles, as well as the destruction of property”, according to the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed there.

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Gross rights violations, possibly including war crimes and crimes against humanity, may have been committed by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia and the Congolese military and its affiliates in eastern DRC, UN investigators said last week.

A fact-finding mission by the UN Human Rights Office said on Friday that it has determined that all sides in the devastating conflict had committed abuses since late 2024, including summary executions and rampant sexual violence in the provinces of North and South Kivu.

The ADF group is believed to be made up of about 1,000 to 1,500 members, according to UN experts, and includes foreign fighters who rely on light arms, machetes, mortars and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to carry out their attacks.

“They aren’t strong enough to hold territory, but they are strong enough to survive,” Stig Jarle Hansen, an expert on al-Qaeda and ISIL in Africa, told Al Jazeera.

As a result, to evade detection by the DRC’s authorities and neighbouring Uganda, which has been fighting the group, too, they “tend to be mobile” and enter villages to “carry out attacks for recruits and to establish their dominance”, Hansen added.

“They take children after these mass casualty attacks, through forced recruitment.”

ADF emerged in the 1990s during internecine disputes within Uganda’s Muslim community, initially known as the Ugandan Muslim Freedom Fighters. The group wanted to overthrow the Ugandan government, but was pushed back into the DRC.

It remained in the DRC’s rural areas near the Ugandan border until a change of leadership. The group’s founder, Jamil Mukulu, was arrested in Tanzania in 2015, and replaced by Musa Seka Baluku, who tied the ADF’s fate to ISIL in 2017 when he pledged allegiance.

In 2019, it was recognised as part of the group, becoming one half of the Central Africa Province, the other being in Mozambique. The United States designated it a terror organisation in 2021.

Earlier this year, Uganda deployed its troops to the DRC’s Ituri and North Kivu provinces as part of Operation Shujaa to fight against the ADF group. Two Ugandan soldiers were killed last week in clashes with members of the armed group.