Ugandan army strikes rebel camps in eastern DRC

KAMPALA — Uganda’s army said on Friday it had launched attacks on a shadowy rebel group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the militants killed 14 UN peacekeepers earlier this month.

Army spokesperson Richard Karemire said the air force and long-range artillery were used in the crossborder strike, however no ground troops were deployed in what was described as a “pre-emptive move”.

He said in a statement that intelligence sharing with the DRC revealed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group was planning “hostile activities” against Uganda.

The ADF, a Ugandan Muslim rebel group whose basic motives and ideology remain unclear, was behind an attack that left 14 Tanzanian peacekeepers dead two weeks ago and scores wounded, according to the UN.

Both Uganda and the DRC insist on a jihadist motive to the group’s actions, however many observers and experts say there has been no proven link with the global jihadist underground, and that this is a “simplistic” explanation for their acts.

Karemire said the strike was the culmination of co-operation between Kinshasa and Kampala against “this growing terrorist menace in our neighbourhood”.

“They have been recruiting, training and carrying out radicalisation even of women and children while working with foreign jihadists,” he said.

Karemire said that while the ADF has conducted massacres in the DRC, it has also “instigated killings of Muslim clerics and some notable people”, in Uganda.

“Of recent, there have been increased signals of intended active hostile activities against Uganda necessitating beefing up security along the border.”

The ADF started out in 1989 with the aim of overthrowing Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, who was seen as hostile to Muslims. But it went on to absorb other rebel factions into its ranks and started carrying out attacks in 1995.

Forced westwards by the Ugandan army, the group relocated most of its activities to the DRC, finding a lucrative niche in its lawless, resource-rich east.

Its rollcall of crimes includes mass killings and maiming using machetes, the use of child soldiers and rape, according to the UN.

The ADF was blamed for an ambush on UN peacekeepers in eastern DR Congo in October, which killed two peacekeepers and wounded 12.

It has also been accused by Kinshasa and the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO of killing more than 700 people in the Beni region since October 2014.— Reuters.