The news from north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is devastating. Seventeen Christians have been killed and approximately one hundred others abducted in an attack claimed by Islamic State's Central Africa Province (ISCAP). The village of Mushasha was targeted, homes were burned, and a community was shattered in a single act of violence.

Barnabas Aid, which has been monitoring and responding to Christian persecution in Africa for decades, has reported this attack with the gravity it deserves. ISCAP has been responsible for a series of attacks on Christian communities in the region, and the pattern is grimly familiar: targeted violence against villages, the killing of men, and the abduction of women and children.

The DRC rarely makes headlines in the UK press, and that invisibility is itself a form of injustice. These are our brothers and sisters — people who gather to worship the same Christ we worship, who read the same Scriptures, who pray the same prayers. Their suffering is not distant from us; it is part of the same body.

Barnabas Aid is asking for prayer and for practical support. Prayer, because the situation is beyond human solution and the people affected need the sustaining presence of God. Practical support, because Barnabas Aid's partners on the ground are working to provide emergency aid, trauma care, and long-term rebuilding. To give to this work is to say, with your resources, that these lives matter.