The attack did not come without warning. In June 2025, the Saint Anuarite church had sent a formal request to local authorities asking for protection during upcoming church activities. The request went unheeded. Neither the Congolese military (FARDC), the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, nor local security forces provided protection or intervened during the assault. The ADF had already been responsible for the highest number of civilian killings in the DRC during the previous year. The Komanda area had experienced a period of relative calm in the months before the attack, and many displaced civilians had returned to their homes, believing the worst had passed. That fragile sense of security made the brutality of what followed all the more devastating.

ADF fighters entered the church compound and rounded up dozens of worshippers. They executed at least 20 people with machetes. Others were killed with firearms. Some of those present managed to flee into the surrounding forest. One survivor told Human Rights Watch: "They told us to sit down, and then started hitting people on the back of the neck. They killed two people I didn't know, and that's when I decided to flee with four others. We managed to run away — they shot at us but didn't hit us." Five more people were killed in an attack on the broader town of Komanda that same night. Some who were kidnapped during the assault later managed to escape, but others remained missing. The people in that church were not combatants or political figures. They were neighbors, parents, teenagers, children gathered in a place they believed was safe.

The scale of the killing drew condemnation from across the world. Pope Leo expressed "deep sorrow" during his weekly audience at St. Peter's Square, praying for the victims. The Congolese Catholic bishops' conference, CENCO, called it an "odious massacre." The UN Security Council issued a formal statement on August 7, expressing condolences to the families and to the government of the DRC. MONUSCO provided an excavator to assist with mass burials, a grim and practical detail that conveys the magnitude of loss. The organization pledged to intensify patrols, and joint security operations involving the FARDC, Congolese National Police, and MONUSCO followed in the days after. Congolese and Ugandan forces increased their military presence around Komanda to track the perpetrators.

Human Rights Watch urged both the FARDC and MONUSCO to complete their investigations and publish findings. The organization called for faster response times, better intelligence-sharing with local civilians, and accountability for ADF militants. It noted that Operation Shujaa, a joint Congolese-Ugandan military campaign, had not succeeded in curbing violence across North Kivu and Ituri. Around 30,000 people were displaced in the wake of the Komanda attack. Jacques Anayeyi, president of the Irumu Territorial Youth Council, welcomed increased security patrols but warned that some politicians were exploiting the tragedy to stir hostility against MONUSCO, undermining the fragile cooperation between peacekeepers and communities. The pattern is familiar in eastern Congo: a catastrophic failure of protection, followed by condemnation, followed by promises of reform, while the people who survived bury their dead and wonder whether it will happen again.