Soldiers killed fighting Ugandan rebels

BRAZZAVILLE: Three Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers died on Monday while repelling an attack in the eastern Beni region by ADF Ugandan Islamist rebels, who are suspected of murdering 14 UN peacekeepers last month.

The army had on Saturday announced an offensive against the Allied Democratic Forces, one of a number of armed groups acting in North Kivu and South Kivu — the two provinces which border Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.

“The ADF attacked our position in Muzambay at 4am,” said army spokesman Capt Mak Hazukay.

“We have listed five wounded, three of them in a serious condition,” he said.

But a witness said he saw the corpses of three soldiers in the morgue of Beni’s general hospital. He saw four other troops being treated for wounds at the same facility.

Another source reported seeing an army ambulance transporting two bodies and five wounded soldiers to hospital.

“The firing started very early while we were still sleeping but stopped around 6.30am,” said Aimee Makinda, the wife of a soldier whose house is located near the site of the clashes.

Gilbert Kambale, who heads a local community organisation, said the ADF had made an “incursion” into Beni.

Present in DRC since 1995, the ADF was created by Muslim radicals to oppose Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s rule.

On Sunday, Museveni said Ugandan forces, who claim to have killed 100 ADF fighters in air strikes in eastern DRC last month, would support Kinshasa’s offensive “where necessary”, but did not go into detail.

Congolese authorities and the UN mission in DRC, Monusco, accuse the ADF of killing more than 700 civilians as well as combatants in the Beni region since 2014.

The group also stands accused of killing 14 UN peacekeepers in eastern DRC last month.