The Is­lam­ic State group has is­sued a state­ment claim­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for killing more than 35 peo­ple and wound­ing dozens in east­ern Con­go.

In the state­ment, post­ed Fri­day by Aa­maq, the mil­i­tants’ news agency, it said it killed “Chris­tians” with guns and knives and de­stroyed their prop­er­ty in Mukon­di vil­lage in North Kivu province. It al­so pub­lished a pho­to of the hous­es on fire.

The an­nounce­ment comes af­ter lo­cal au­thor­i­ties con­firmed that at least 45 peo­ple were killed last week in sev­er­al at­tacks on dif­fer­ent vil­lages by rebels from the Al­lied De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Forces, a mili­tia with links to IS.

Con­flict has been sim­mer­ing in east­ern Con­go for decades as more than 120 armed groups fight for pow­er, in­flu­ence and re­sources, and some to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties. The ADF has been large­ly ac­tive in North Kivu province but has re­cent­ly ex­tend­ed its op­er­a­tions in­to neigh­bour­ing Ituri province and to ar­eas near the re­gion­al cap­i­tal, Go­ma.

Ef­forts to stem the vi­o­lence against ADF have yield­ed lit­tle. A near­ly year-long joint op­er­a­tion by Ugan­da and Con­go’s armies did not achieve the ex­pect­ed re­sults of de­feat­ing or sub­stan­tial­ly weak­en­ing the group, said a re­port in De­cem­ber by a pan­el of U.N. ex­perts. The ADF rebels are ac­cused by the U.N. and rights groups of maim­ing, rap­ing and ab­duct­ing civil­ians, in­clud­ing chil­dren. Ear­li­er this month the Unit­ed States of­fered a re­ward of up to $5 mil­lion for in­for­ma­tion that could lead to the cap­ture of the group’s leader, Se­ka Musa Baluku.

On Thurs­day, AP re­porters saw bod­ies low­ered in­to a mass grave in Mukon­di. Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers shov­elled dirt over the bod­ies against a back­drop of de­stroyed hous­es and said the gov­ern­ment wasn’t do­ing enough to pro­tect them.

“As you see in Mukon­di, it is al­ways the same. ADF, which is al­ways ill-in­ten­tioned against the Con­golese,” said Col. Charles Ehuta Ome­on­ga, mil­i­tary ad­min­is­tra­tor for Beni re­gion. “We lost many of our broth­ers,” he said.

The Unit­ed Na­tions peace­keep­ing mis­sion in Con­go has con­demned the killings and is urg­ing Con­go’s au­thor­i­ties to in­ves­ti­gate and bring those re­spon­si­ble to jus­tice. —DAKAR, Sene­gal (AP)

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Sto­ry by SAM MED­NICK | As­so­ci­at­ed Press.  As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porter Maamoun Youssef con­tributed from Cairo.