The Kivu Security Tracker (KST) research group reported on Monday that at least 50 people were killed overnight in 2 attacks on villages in eastern Congo, in potentially the worst night of violence the area has seen in at least 4 years.

The army and a local civil rights group blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist armed group, for raiding the village of Tchabi and a camp for displaced people near Boga, another village. Both are close to the border of Uganda.

The head of a civil rights group in Boga, Albert Basegu, told Reuters by telephone that he had been alerted to the attack by the sound of cries at a neighbor’s house.

Basegu said: “When I got there I found that the attackers had already killed an Anglican pastor and his daughter was also seriously wounded.”

The wife of a local chief was among the dead, said the KST, which has mapped unrest in restive eastern Congo since June 2017, in a Twitter post. It did not attribute blame for the killings.

“It’s the deadliest day ever recorded by the KST,” said Pierre Boisselet, the research group’s coordinator.

According to the United Nations, the ADF is believed to have claimed over 850 lives in 2020, in a spate of reprisal attacks on civilians after the army began operations against it the year before.