ICC note: A Muslim anti-government rebel group has attacked several majority-Christian villages in the North Kivu region of DR Congo in the last few years, which has resulted in the outrage of most civilians who decided to take the streets in Beni. Many victims and witnesses claim that this Islamic group, called Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), operates alongside members of the Congolese government and other extremist groups like Al-Shabaab. Even though the intentions of the ADF are not clear, many believe that their sole purpose continues to be the Islamization of the entire region in complicity with Al-Shabaab. Furthermore, the majority of the attacks have been against Christian villages.

9/1/2016, Democratic Republic of Congo, (AlJazeera) – Fifty-year-old Maseke Alexandre was sitting in her mud hut in Rwangoma, in the Beni territory, when two men with military fatigues entered. They asked if there were any men living with her. She lied, saying no, in the hope of protecting her son.

The two men debated if they should kill her, but decided against it and left. Moments later, she heard a volley of gunshots. When she rushed out, she found her son, Jack Kambale, had been killed.

“When I came outside, he was dead and other houses were on fire,” Alexandre told Al Jazeera outside her home in Rwangoma.

Her son was a motorcycle taxi driver in the town, he left behind a wife and two children, and an inconsolable mother. Theirs is just one of many stories of violence perpetrated against civilians in the region.

In another part of Rwangoma, Nanon Mbula found his brother Kany Mbula cut up by a machete and lying dead in a pigsty.

“It is difficult. I feel very sad because losing a family member … to lose such a person …” he told Al Jazeera, holding up a photo of his brother. “It is so difficult to understand …”

At least 64 people were killed in the Beni territory over the weekend of August 13 and 14. It is a massacre that has left a nation in mourning and raised difficult questions about the ability of the Congolese army (FARDC) and the UN peacekeeping force, MONUSCO,  in the area to protect the population from the rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), which is believed to be behind the attacks.

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